


Everest

by Posidonia



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends, Fear of Flying, Future Fic, Laver Cup, M/M, Mirka's a boss and has had it with Roger's moods, Mount Everest, Nepal, Non-Linear Narrative, Novak the philosopher, Pindar - Freeform, Roger and his moods, Slow Build, The Great Tennis GOAT Race, The Spanish (tennis) Armada, Wimbledon 2019, and maybe just a bit more if you squint, armchair sports psychology, beach football, everyone loves a big friendly dog, it's complicated with Rafa, major character illness, though sometimes Novak can also be a smartass/know-it-all/troll/great big goof
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2020-09-07 10:55:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20308330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Posidonia/pseuds/Posidonia
Summary: It's 2023, and Roger Federer is the last of the Big Three still on tour.  Having lost the GOAT race and his one chance at true love, he takes a hiatus to go on the strangest of journeys with a former rival he can barely stand, but who has had it even worse than him.CHAPTER 3: Novak and Roger each discover the other has a debilitating phobia. Novak explains his theory of how fate and cosmic justice work; Roger relives a different Wimbledon final and its aftermath on the grueling slog up to the famous Sherpa village of Namche Bazaar.





	1. Kathmandu

**Author's Note:**

> This, strangely enough, is how my brain chose to process the experience of watching the 2019 Wimbledon gentlemen’s final. It was going to be a one-shot, but then morphed into a reflection upon much broader concerns. It is both a Fedal fic and a story about the unlikeliest pair within the Big Three. The narrative is non-linear, so things that seem under explained or mysterious in early chapters will receive exposition down the line. 
> 
> This is obviously completely made up, but at the same time I’ve tried to invent as little as possible. This means that in addition to doing my best to nail the main characters, I am following canon as strictly as possible with stuff like match/tournament results, press conference quotes, personal details that are public (like the fact that both Roger and Novak like spending time in the mountains—with their own families of course, not each other). I’ve also done the trek to Everest Base Camp myself, so all the places and many of the scenarios Roger and Novak end up in are drawn from personal experience. 
> 
> Enjoy!

It amazes him, when he realizes it, that he’s never been here before, after having been around so very much of the world. Low-ceilinged, linoleum-floored, and packed to the gills, Tribhuvan Airport looks and feels more like a hospital waiting room, Roger thinks, than a portal to a new world. He has a backpack on his shoulders and a duffel bag in his racquet hand—The North Face, canary yellow, same as the ones all the alpinists he spots around him are toting. On the wall to his right there’s a fading panorama of snowy peaks; out the bank of windows to his left, only the tarmac, and beyond it the thick brown haze that kept him from glimpsing Kathmandu on the long, wheeling descent to earth.

There are maybe one or two pairs of eyes hanging surreptitiously on him, but for the most part everyone around him is doing a fine job ignoring him and the camera hovering in front of his face. Most extras play their part well, Roger has learned over the years, when they are told the success of the fiction hangs just as much upon them as upon the story’s top-billed stars. And fiction this certainly all is—the commercial flight, the seemingly solo arrival, Roger Federer schlepping his own bags and going through passport control just like any other Joe Shmo tourist. He cannot remember the last time he has touched down anyplace in anything other than a Learjet or Gulfstream, or done anything upon arriving except step into a Mercedes on the tarmac and go straight to his hotel or event.

Never hurts to try something new, he reminds himself for the hundredth time.

Only once do things come close to veering off script: when Roger turns in his paperwork at the head of the last queue he’s supposed to clear. The officer who processes his tourist visa glances briefly at him, checks the name on his passport against the name on the application, then does a long double take. He has not been let in ahead of time on the act, Roger realizes; but all this young man in uniform finally does—maybe he is a tennis fan—is smile at him, marveling in secret at the visitation of this improbable angel, and hand his passport back reverentially with both hands. Out in arrivals, the camera finally gets out of his face, and Roger spots the welcome committee: the rest of the film crew, more equipment on the ready, and a brace of assistants in track suits and baseball hats, accompanied by a couple of Nepalese officials in suits.

“His flight’s been delayed a couple of hours in Doha, actually, so we’re unfortunately going to have to wait,” one assistant says, after Roger has done his meet-and-greet with the officials. “Can’t film you two meeting up at the hotel, it wouldn’t be the same.”

“No worries,” Roger says.

“Can I get you anything, sir? Tea, coffee, a snack?”

He’s youngish—maybe late twenties, Roger guesses—and speaks with a light, pleasant Slavic accent.

“I’m fine, thanks,” Roger says, gesturing to the water bottle clipped to the side of his backpack, before fishing out his phone to discover a pair of new text messages.

This too is a part of the fiction: he and his travel companion, millionaire celebrities and former professional adversaries, meeting up in international arrivals like two cash-strapped university friends ahead of an adventure of a lifetime. He’s already tired of the cameras, however, so he doesn’t mind waiting a bit before having to do the next scene, and sinks down atop his very fully-packed duffel bag to respond to his texts. The others fortunately pick up the signal, form a human cordon around him, so that by the time Roger’s done with his phone he able for once to sit out of sight and watch, rather than be watched by, the world. It’s almost an hour before the announcement comes confirming the arrival of Qatar Airways Flight 646, and by the time he spots someone who could be the person they are waiting for, coming out of the baggage claim hall with the rest of the human flood, the hour hand on his Rolex has moved nearly another slot.

“ ‘Kay, Roger, we’re on,” someone says, and the camera is back in Roger’s face as he gets obediently to his feet.

At first, he’s not actually so sure it is him. It being the start of the climbing season, many of the people arriving are tall, sinewy, sporty men. But there’s a cameraman shadowing this new arrival too, and once he draws closer, Roger realizes there is no mistaking the figure, flat and long and narrow as a cricket bat, or the sauntering gait he has seen prowl so many a baseline before a serve. He, too, is carrying his own bags, color-coordinated with his clothing in shades of blue.

“Roger!” Novak exclaims, dropping his bag and holding out a bony hand. “Glad you made it. So good to see you again.”

Roger accepts the handshake as scripted, but then promptly forgets his line. Stares.

He hasn’t seen Novak in person in over a year and a half. Illness has, in the interval, distilled the latter into a caricature of his former self—left his long clean lines angular and brittle, his sharp jaw and strong nose even sharper and stronger. The puffer jacket Novak is wearing cannot disguise how thin he is underneath; and there’s a weariness to his toothy grin—a distinct lack of irony and self-satisfaction—Roger does not recall ever having seen before.

Only Novak’s eyes, keen and green and watchful, are as they have ever been.

“Good to see you too,” Roger says at last. “Thanks for having me along.”

He forces a smile for the cameras, and for Novak.

In a normal world, Roger would of course have never found himself here, in the smoky foothills of the Himalayas, about to begin a weeks-long trek to the foot of the world’s highest mountain with Novak bloody Djokovic of all people. It’s the start of March, which means he’s supposed to be coming fresh off a deep run in Dubai, resting up in the home country for three weeks of tennis in California and Florida. But the world hasn’t been normal for years, judging by when he’s last won or gone deep in anything of significance.

In the world he now finds himself in, he is—judging by what transpired in Paris four months ago, and in Shanghai a fortnight before that—a mere mockery of Roger Federer.

The first time it had happened, he’d tried not to let it get to him too much. Retiring from a match for any reason was never a good look, but he’d at least genuinely put his back into the contest against his limber 19-year-old opponent, only maybe a bit too enthusiastically. His trainer had pronounced him fortunate, prescribed a week’s abstinence from practice, and advised him to reconsider his plans for the Paris Indoor.

Instead he had charged straight into the next contest, thinking fury and humiliation could together help produce one of his vintage performances—only to be felled, this time by an inexplicable tidal wave of exhaustion, in the opening rather than the third round.

The next day there had been the usual trickle of consolatory texts, juxtaposed against—and dwarfed by—the deluge of catty headlines and tweets (“After a title-less season culminating in back to back retirements in early rounds at the Shanghai and Paris Masters, is it past time for Roger Federer actually to retire?”). He’d done his very best to ignore both: sympathy and shade after such bad turns galled him alike. And he would have succeeded, if a phone call from someone he hardly ever expected to talk to again had not drawn his attention to a doozy of a headline in the Daily Express:

> _20-time Slam winner and cancer survivor Djokovic expresses concern for Federer, hopes former rival will consult medical professionals after recent fatigue-related match retirements._

“I’m so sorry, Roger,” Novak gasped, sounding genuinely mortified. “You know the way journalists are. They ask me one question about you and before I know it they’re asking me what do I mean, I’m worried about you?”

Roger, in no mood to speak to Novak about this—or indeed, anything—had cast about for the most civil reply he was capable of, and mumbled it.

“No worries, OK? It happens sometimes. But maybe next time don’t talk to anyone, yeah? Easier that way to avoid saying something you didn’t mean to say.”

“Have you actually checked in with a doctor lately, though?” said Novak. “Not a sports doctor, but a _doctor_ doctor?”

Roger spat out a startled laugh. Novak Djokovic, he’d come over the years to realize and accept, could act on occasion like a decent person, but this was just laying it on too thick.

“I’m fine, Novak. I’m not ill. Just old.”

“Well, that’s what I thought about myself, too, until I found out that wasn’t the case.”

Abruptly Roger relived a series of images that had, at the time, struck him vaguely droll rather than portentous. Novak slipping and falling six times during his third round loss to Felix Auger-Aliassime at Wimbledon the year before last, to Centre Court’s disgust and glee. Novak missing broad daylight shots at Cincinnati the month after, prompting a thousand jeering Internet memes. Then finally, round two at Flushing Meadows, Novak calmly walking over to a court-side bin in the middle of a game, advantage Tsitsipas, to vomit amidst a sea of boos.

The following day, the sports pundits had, as after Roger’s undignified tumble out of the Paris Indoor, gone to town—unaware to a person it was the last match Novak would ever play.

“Well,” said Roger, swallowing. “Nice of you to be concerned, Novak, but don’t be. I’ll bounce back from this.”

“I’m sure you will—but please go see a doctor, OK? Never hurts to be sure you’re in the clear.”

“I will when I decide I need to,” Roger snapped. “I don’t need you telling me what to do.”

With that he’d unceremoniously hung up, and thrown his phone across the room for good measure.

As with everything else involving or concerning Novak Djokovic, Roger had tried to put the conversation out of his mind afterwards. In the days and weeks following, however, it abided as stubbornly as a burr on a cardigan, playing back constantly in a never-ending loop of recrimination. It had to be the way he’d spoken to Novak, Roger thought at first, that was bothering him: that had been a most unfortunate betrayal of his brand, the phone conversation equivalent of smashing a racket.

But then the prospect of playing at Melbourne—for it was already then the middle of December—began to loom into focus for Roger, and with it the true reason the exchange would not leave his mind. While listening to Novak plead with him to see a doctor, Roger had, for a second, thought something that—now that he recollected it—split his soul with fear and guilt.

He wasn’t seriously ill; at least, he was pretty sure he wasn’t. But a part of him had desperately wished—and actually, still wished—he were.

Because then he’d be off the hook. He’d have his honorable discharge—not quite from the world of tennis, which to him was life itself, but from the endless chase that had been the thrill, then the goad, then finally the curse of that life for the last twenty-five years. Now that, in its eleventh hour, the chase had turned into a chase for real, there was no bowing out of it absent an act of God—not, at least, before Roger succeeded in his desperate rearguard action to correct the wrong math of Grand Slam victories. But it was exhausting, this business of getting history back on his side: all this losing to kids and second rate talents, to be endured while the months and years stacked up in his back, knees, ankles, in his soul, till he should finally again resume winning and return—this time permanently—to being the greatest of all time.

Dismayed by such thoughts, which seemed to be coming from some malign influence beyond him, Roger canvassed his team. Asked them if playing the Australian made any sense, given what had happened at Shanghai and Paris. Of course, said his coaches and trainers: It hadn’t been his tennis that had failed there; so why not play if he expected to feel stronger after a month’s rest?

Perhaps, his sports psychologist and other psychologist concurred on the other hand, he could do with an extended break—not a physical holiday, but a mental one.

“It’s your decision,” said Mirka, after Roger had delivered his roundup of everyone’s opinions, like a good cabinet aide to a president.

“But that doesn’t help,” Roger muttered miserably.

She fixed him with an odd look—something halfway, he reckoned, between a reproach and caress. “Then do what will make you happy.”

Roger froze.

I’m only happy when I’m playing, he wanted to say.

But it was a lie, and he knew she’d know it too. Only one thing had ever made Roger Federer truly happy; and after Shanghai and Paris—after the way the whole year and the year before that had gone—finding happiness at the Australian seemed less likely a prospect than getting to Mars on a hot air balloon.

One sleepless night later, blinking away the rawness in his eyes, Roger had fired off the tweet, first thing in the morning between brushing his teeth and heading down for breakfast. _After much personal reflection and consultation with my team … _

December had passed in a blur of family and merrymaking muted by rumination; then the new year had come, bright and snowy and cold. Down in Melbourne, the tennis had not yet ended when Roger put out another announcement, this one about sitting out Rotterdam as well. Briefly the tennis world murmured, speculated, then settled back down to watch Thiem v. Medvedev unfold in the antipodean heat. Marooned in wintry Switzerland, Roger prowled laps around the iced-over hardcourt behind his house, dribbled indoors, and sulked.

Then, just as he was beginning to agonize over what to do about Dubai—it was already almost February—the phone call that was to upend everything had come. Seeing who it was, Roger had started, hesitated, then decided it was better for a host of reasons to gird his loins and answer it.

“Hey, Roger! Happy New Year.”

“This is a pleasant surprise,” Roger lied. “How are you?”

On the other end of the line, Novak Djokovic was, it appeared from the sounds reaching Roger, lounging by a pool being churned up by a gaggle of hollering children. Yes: even Monte Carlo had to be warmer than Bottmingen this time of year, he thought, as he turned and eyed the snow misting the hillside outside his window.

“Better and better every day, thank goodness,” said Novak, sounding excruciatingly upbeat to match. “I can walk five kilometers on the treadmill without tripping and falling on my face, which is incredible, considering the shape I was in this time of year last year. And you?”

“Oh,” Roger said. “Fine. Resting up, and, you know, working my way back at my own pace. Staying positive for the future and all that.”

There was an awkward pause, punctuated by sounds of splashing and screaming from hundreds of miles away.

“Look, Novak—” Roger took a deep breath. “Sorry I was such a dick last time we talked. I was in a bad place, yeah?”

Novak protested. There was nothing to apologize for; and besides, Roger ought to have experienced what he, Novak, had been like two years ago, when he’d tumbled off the cliff of normalcy and wellness without knowing that he had, or a year ago after he’d finally reached the bottom of that cliff, or even six months ago as he was laboring his way back up.

“Well, I did go see a doctor, like you suggested,” Roger added hastily, embarrassed by Novak’s aggressive charity. “A _doctor_ doctor.”

“And what did he tell you?”

Roger’s general practitioner was actually a she, Roger informed Novak; and from her he had learned, as he had expected to, that he was, the usual mechanical ailments aside, phenomenally healthy for a 41-year old.

“So that was a relief,” said Roger.

Privately, he’d been disgusted—first at his luck; then at himself, for wanting illness to explain, then ennoble, the failures that were his and his alone.

“That’s great news you’re healthy, Roger,” said Novak—sounding, to Roger’s present disgust, wholly sincere. “So you’re gonna return to tour sometime?”

Roger tensed. Of fucking course: there was no way he wouldn’t be. But he hadn’t given much thought to what was going to happen after Dubai—which, now that he thought about it, he was ninety percent sure he would have to skip; and at present, confronted abruptly with the idea of Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo—of everything beyond—he felt suddenly and slightly ill.

“Yes,” he told Novak anyway. “That’s the plan.”

Then he frowned.

“Why do you ask?”

Novak sighed—a long-drawn, plaintive exhalation. “So, this thing I’m planning to do in Nepal in March—”

Yes, Roger said; he had heard of it through the ATP grapevine. Novak would be there most of the month, making a three-week foot journey to and from Mount Everest Base Camp. Already while still healthy and on tour, he’d dreamt of doing it after retirement; now that he was a global poster boy for the fight against brain cancer, the whole thing—a tall feat for someone who, twelve months ago, could barely walk in a straight line after the ravages both of the disease and its barbaric remedies—was to be live-tweeted, blogged, Instagrammed, and finally memorialized in an inspirational documentary, courtesy of the combined efforts of The North Face, Lacoste, and the Djokovic Foundation. Medical research, the impoverished Everest region, and sport in Nepal would all benefit from the advertising proceeds. And to top it all off, Sir Andy Murray would be tagging along—promising tennis fans around the world comic relief, nostalgia, and a reason to follow the whole spectacle on social media from start to finish.

It was a brilliant idea, Roger assured Novak. Privately, he felt the very opposite. If one actually gave a damn about brain cancer research or tennis in Nepal, the proper thing to do was to sponsor an exhibition match, or a walk-a-thon, or even a boring charity dinner in Monte Carlo. Something conventional and straightforward, that didn’t reek of classless self-promotion, and that didn’t require the star to pretend to care about the state of tennis in an impoverished country about which everyone knew he would otherwise not give two tosses.

“Unfortunately, Andy’s had to pull out of it,” said Novak. “His hip, he told me it was giving him trouble again, and that his doctors were very much against him doing something that strenuous.”

Oh, said Roger. He was sorry to hear that.

“But—so you will be spending March practicing, I’m guessing? Or maybe you will play at Indian Wells or Miami?” Novak spoke cautiously, wholly unaware his anodyne assumptions were, in fact, anything but safe footsteps through the minefield of Roger’s ravaged psyche.

Roger breathed deeply through his nose—in, out. “Is there something I can do for you, Novak?”

“Well—” Novak stopped, cleared his throat, started again. “I called because I was wondering, in case you—uh—weren’t playing in March, or hadn’t made up your mind about it yet, if this was something you’d be—uh—interested in doing instead. Going to Nepal and doing the charity trek with me, I mean.”

For a while Roger was silent.

“Roger?”

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

“Right. OK. Thought I’d lost you there for a second.”

Another pause.

“Novak,” Roger said at last. “It’s nice of you to ask, but—”

A sharp exclamation in Serbian cut him off. It was several hair-raising seconds before Roger realized Novak was not shouting at him: someone in or next to a pool in Monte Carlo had just tried something dangerous, and the perpetrator, now talking back distantly in bright, indignant French, was winding Uncle Novak up to new heights of irritation.

“Sorry, Roger, I’m the only lifeguard here on duty today,” Novak said at last, the verbal rally fought and won. On the other end of the line, a sullen calm had fallen over the pool. “Of course, I completely understand. You can’t do it.”

In the longish moment it took him to reorient himself, Roger realized—to his own surprise—that that was not what he had actually meant to say. “Surely there are others who would be able and happy to do this with you, Novak? I can think of at least half a dozen big names who are … you know.”

Well and truly retired, he hoped Novak would supply.

“Like Rafa,” Roger said, before he could stop himself. “Have you asked him?”

No, was Novak’s answer.

“Are you going to?”

Again—and to Roger’s surprise: “No.”

Intrigued, Roger sat up straighter on the couch. “Why not? He’s not doing much these days besides running his academy, right?”

And he still talks to you, too, he thought in the silence that followed, the texture of which he could not quite read.

When at long last Novak did answer, his accent had gone paper-crisp—a change Roger knew bespoke the raising of an emotional wall.

“It would have been really nice to have you along, Roger. I was hoping you could do it. But I’m glad you’re gonna be back on tour soon—really glad and happy. Rest up well and come back strong, yeah? Would love to see you teach the kids a lesson again. They’ve been getting—how should I say? A bit too full of themselves, without us three around to show them their place.”

And with that, Novak said goodbye and hung up, leaving Roger to turn, as he invariably did when perplexed, to Mirka for illumination.

“Why is it so strange he should ask you?” she said. “People do put your name with his in the same sentence, believe it or not.”

“Because we’re now tied for second best of all time, right?” said Roger bitterly.

She lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “You’re exactly right. And such an awful place to be, isn’t it?”

Unable to speak, Roger stormed off to the shed, where he spent the rest of the afternoon firing volley after volley, relishing the gunshot-like crack of the ball on sheet metal.

Later, enough of his surliness thus pounded out, he ambled past Mirka’s study—the door was open—and, leaning in casually, wondered aloud whether Novak had it in mind, by asking him to relinquish a month of his time, to prevent him from ever getting back in harness.

“That’s ridiculous,” Mirka said, before Roger could even finish. “Why would he want to do that?”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Rogi, I’ll be honest with you,” she said. Sweeping her reading glasses off, she pinned him a pained look. “Even if he cares about such things now, and I rather doubt he does after what he’s been through, he probably wouldn’t need to do anything to keep you where you are till the end of days.”

“What do you mean, he wouldn’t need to do anything?”

“You seem to be managing it on your own just fine.”

Roger gaped at her.

“Look, just tell Novak no, for God’s sake,” Mirka exclaimed, flinging her glasses down with a clatter. “Don’t waste time or energy worrying about what he’s thinking. That’s all irrelevant if you don’t want to do it.” She paused, furious. “You did tell him no, didn’t you?”

Roger, speechless, turned his gaze to the floor.

In the end, Roger decides, he had been looking for something outrageous to do—something that would tell the world he was not only, as they’d all suspected, no longer himself, but had also, at long last, slipped past the point of caring. Everyone whom tennis had broken had, after all, needed stiff ways of coping with their brokenness. Andre Agassi had gotten hooked on crystal meth, Mats Wilander cocaine.

Roger Federer had chosen to go to Nepal for the rest of the spring hardcourt season, to be an ambassador for his sport and the fight against brain cancer and a wingman for a former tennis colleague he’d gotten good at pretending not to despise.

As he bounces along with Novak in the back of a battered van through Kathmandu’s streets, however, Roger is no longer so sure this is such an ideal way—however respectable—of giving tennis and the universe and everything else the middle finger. Out here the chaos he thought was already impressive enough in Tribhuvan’s halls has multiplied tenfold. There are no lane dividers on the dirt roads, and not a centimeter is spared between the cars, buses, motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles, and occasional jaywalker scrimmaging for the right of way. Inside their tiny vehicle it is much the same situation: bags piled high in the back, driver and assistants hunched in front, and the middle, he and Novak jammed so tightly together, thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder, that Roger can feel Novak’s brittle frame buckle against his every time they brake suddenly or go over a pothole.

“What’s the craziest place you’ve been, Roger?” Novak asks genially, after the last bone-rattling jolt has sent them knocking together like bowling pins. There’s a camera pointed at them, nestled in the narrow space between the driver’s seat and the front-row passenger’s, and he’s much better at staying on for it than Roger.

“Oh, I dunno,” Roger mumbles. “Rush-hour Manhattan’s pretty bad.”

“Seriously? It’s a walk in the park compared to this.”

“What have you experienced that’s worse than getting to or from Arthur Ashe during rush hour?”

“Oh, several places. Rome, Beijing, Delhi. Belgrade can get pretty nasty. But the most phenomenal traffic I’ve ever been in? Dakar, for _sure_. It took us two hours to drive five miles from the airport the evening we arrived. We would have gotten there faster walking.”

“And gotten run over, I’m sure,” Roger deadpans.

His timing is phenomenally good, or phenomenally bad, for just that instant their van slams to a halt, inches away from a pedestrian who’s now gesticulating furiously at them. He hears a soft curse, and turns to see Novak massaging his left shoulder with his right hand.

They reach their hotel, by a miracle of some sort, in one piece after forty minutes of this roller derby. It’s a swanky oasis in the middle of Kathmandu’s tourist district, well hidden by the narrowest and longest of driveways from the teeming street on which it is supposedly located. The sounds—and smells—of the city do not reach them here in the courtyard, a lush ornamental garden walled in on three sides by rows of white balconies culminating in trapezoidal roofs. Roger sets his backpack down by a fountain, sits on its broad lip, and, trailing his fingers through its sparkling waters, wonders if he’ll survive to see April.

There’s a fulsome welcome from the staff; then, over mango-ginger juice and sugary little squares that remind Roger of halvah, they’re subjected to a briefing of the next forty-eight hours as their bags are hauled up to their rooms. Today there will be nothing happening except a dinner, thank God, because it’s late afternoon already and they must be tired just from getting here. The next day and the day after, though, they’ll be in front of the cameras almost every minute. Day One they’ll be playing tourists again, making the rounds of several obligatory sights, Durbar Square and Swayambhunath Temple and the Royal Palace and the Garden of Dreams. Day Two will be the marathon of sport promotion: a children’s athletics fair organized by The North Face, including of course a tennis clinic for novice youngsters, all to take place on temporary grass courts drawn on the football pitch at Dasarath Stadium—partly in homage to Roger’s eight Wimbledons and Novak’s six, and partly because there is not a single decent hard court to be found in Kathmandu.

It will all be topped off, before they head off to the mountains first thing Day Three, with an exhibition match by Nepal’s national cricket team, in which Roger, the Djokovic Foundation’s two coordinators announce proudly, will be invited to bat a few balls. Roger expresses his appreciation with a small smile: it is nice of them not to have forgotten he is half South African on his mother’s side. He notes, however, that there’s no mention of so much of an exhibition set or game to take place between him and Novak. He thinks back to footage of the racket swings that hit nothing but air, the drunken stumbles on Wimbledon grass and American blue hard courts, and wonders warily, as he eyes Novak who is all business and focus next to him, if brains heal after they’ve been filleted open by the surgeon’s scalpel.

Because there is only a dinner to get through tonight, Roger expects it to be some big welcome affair, replete with generic banquet spreads and local dignitaries and stuffy speeches. But that, he finds out, is actually to be tomorrow, when they’ll be dining at the hotel with the Directors of the National Sports Commission and the Youth Sports Ministry, as well as some members from the national cricket and football teams.

Tonight, it is to be just the two of them.

“We figured you’d want to catch up,” the youngish pleasant-accented assistant, whose name Roger has learned is Vanja, says. “Since it’s been a while since you’ve seen each other, yes?”

Inwardly, Roger’s swearing, although a part of him berates himself for agreeing to spend nearly a month with Novak while thinking something like this could ever be avoided. “Yeah, it has been a while. Sure. Thanks.”

At half-past seven he obediently descends to the courtyard, washed up and refreshed by a brief lie-down. Novak is already there, chatting merrily by the sparkling fountain with a woman who is, by the looks of it, a member of the hotel staff. She greets Roger with a broad smile and hands pressed palm-to-palm—“_Namaste_”—and indicates for him and for Novak to follow her. Roger reciprocates with a nod, avoiding eye contact with Novak, and off they go, through the courtyard and narrow passageway and out into the thronging warren of shop-lined streets that is Kathmandu’s Thamel district.

The nearby restaurant she leads them to is an outdoor affair—rustic wooden tables, set under a canopy of trees and colored Christmas lights strung in cross-hatched patterns. Spice hangs heavily in the air, as does something faintly floral. Only once has Roger sat down does he realize no cameras have followed them here. As he watches their guide remind them of the route back to the hotel before leaving, he has no idea whether to feel glad or not glad there will be no witnesses.

They study the restaurant’s offerings in silence, he and Novak. Nepal’s food—of which Roger knows nothing—reminds him vaguely of Chinese and Indian at the same time: curries and stir-fries, rice and noodles, dumplings stuffed with an array of fillings. Having decided quickly, he avoids the awkwardness of rushing Novak, who is still squinting at his menu, by pretending to need more time. In the interval, he notices how squared Novak’s shoulders and strung out his neck are—as if he, sitting opposite Roger, were readying to return a serve, and not lounging in expectation of being served.

Finally they put in their orders—paneer in tomato sauce for Roger; “dal bhat” for Novak. The waiter leaves, and Roger, no excuses remaining, is cornered into breaking the ice.

“What’s ‘dal bhat’?” he asks Novak, lamely.

“Rice with lentil stew and a curry of vegetables. Nepal’s national dish actually, if I’m not mistaken, so I figure I can’t go wrong with that.”

“Hm,” says Roger.

It’s so awkward it’s excruciating, but he has to keep on talking.

“Are you still on your special diet, then?”

“Mm-hm.”

There are shadows under Novak’s cheekbones as well as under his eyes, Roger notices; and his Adam’s apple is as prominent as a small hill on his sinewy neck.

“You know,” Roger says carefully, “I get the gluten-free part, but a little bit of meat or fish now and then might not be a bad idea. Would help—you know—put some weight on you.”

Novak shrugs. “It worked for me while I was winning Slams, so it should be good enough for beating cancer, shouldn’t it?”

Roger is silent.

“In fact,” Novak adds, putting his elbows on the table and steepleing his fingers, “you might wish yourself to consider going plant-based on this trip.”

“Oh?”

That proves Novak’s cue to explain at length how meat is, while not exactly unavailable on the trail to Everest Base Camp, suspect and best avoided, because the whole region around Everest is sacred to Tibetan Buddhism, meaning animals cannot be slaughtered in those mountains, meaning all the meat there is to eat on the trail is carried in on foot by porters or on the backs of pack animals, meaning the meat will have been at room temperature for days by the time it arrives on one’s plate.

“But isn’t it supposed to be really, really cold there in the mountains?” Roger says, after the lecture has concluded. (After volunteering himself as tribute for this enterprise, he’d called up an alpinist friend who’d been to the region for guidance on what to pack, and had been told to buy a parka twice as thick as the thickest one he owned.) “Doesn’t that amount to natural refrigeration?”

“Sure it’s cold, but I don’t think cold enough. I mean—” Novak shrugs—“if you feel like gambling your stomach on it, then sure, it’s your choice. I certainly wouldn’t.”

And right there, like a wound-out toy, their conversation halts. Roger’s eyes drift to the table settings in front of them; Novak’s, after several moments of silence, to the lights above. About half a minute passes like this before Roger begins again to cast about for something—anything—to say. Instead, all his mind does is wander unhelpfully, in a quest to locate the last time they’d actually eaten at the same table, to figure out two things: how long it really has been, and how the hell they’d managed that time to survive the ordeal.

The mental archive eventually yields an answer: the Laver Cup five years ago, the one that had happened in Chicago. To Roger’s surprise then, four days of Novak, sixteen hours a day, had not actually been as bad as he’d feared and expected it would be. But nearly all of that time they’d been among a group, and that had likely made all the difference. The presence of Sascha, Grigor, David and the others had been like a sturdy seawall against injurious memories—a barrier of genuine bonhomie, keeping the open sea of their animosity from roiling Team Europe’s harmony.

Granted, when it had come time for just the two of them to take the stage, to be a team, it had gone unexpectedly well too. Many had been impressed—even the _New York Times_, which later celebrated their improbable alliance with the headline: “Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic become besties.” [[1]](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/sports/tennis/roger-federer-novak-djokovic-laver-cup.html?searchResultPosition=1) But it had still been a forced conviviality, those moments on court in front of the cameras, stoked by the pressure cooker of the doubles match and the hysteria of the arena atmosphere. And to any truly observant onlookers, the make-believe nature of their camaraderie would have revealed itself decisively, Roger knew, in the way Novak had chosen to apologize for forehanding him in the backside in that early service game: with a suggestive massage and shit-eating grin, put on just for the giant screen replay and YouTube highlights, rather than with words. [[2]](https://youtu.be/ObY6FxjbSgI?t=314)

That’s why we don’t play doubles, bro, he’d told Novak moments later on the bench, as he gloatingly watched Novak inspect, with horror, the bruise a blazing groundstroke from Jack Sock had stamped on his chest on the very next point. We were never meant to be on the same side of the net, you and I.

In the end, it is the setting they are in at present that hands Roger the inspiration for another ice-breaker.

“Your parents owned a restaurant, didn’t they?”

Novak’s eyebrows rise. “Yes, they did,” he says—surprised, it appears, that Roger knows even this much about him.

“What was that like? Growing up in a restaurant, I mean.”

The words have barely left his mouth when Roger cringes. Were anyone to say that to him, he’d think they’d assumed he’d spent a grungy youth washing dishes in the back, giving up childhood early to help his parents eke a living. But the corners of Novak’s eyes, he is surprised to see, are crinkling in a smile.

“I actually did a lot of waitering. I’d go up to guests and say, ‘I may be young, but I promise I’ll remember your order.’”

Roger teeters on the edge of a joke, then decides to take the plunge. “Training early on to be a champion at that, too, eh?”

Judging from Novak’s expression, he has taken a hard landing. “Sorry?”

Roger bites his lip. “That’s what they do in Michelin-starred restaurants, isn’t it? Memorize your order instead of writing it down.”

Novak rolls his eyes. “Look, it was a pizza parlor my parents owned—”

Suddenly loud music—a live band—starts behind them, cutting him off. (Yes: their local guide had mentioned something about the establishment having live entertainment, and a “good atmosphere.”)

“We had, like, three things on the menu,” Novak shouts over the music, once they’ve both recovered. “Pizza, ice cream, and Coke.”

For a minute they stare and listen, gladly relieved of the chore of making conversation. The singers and musicians wear elaborate clothing, and their music, produced out of reeds and string instruments and a battery of drums, sounds vaguely to Roger like Swiss yodeling. For a moment, Roger wonders whether the chaotic variety of human culture hides universal tendencies; whether something about the mountains, about clinging to life on their unforgiving flanks, breeds similar strains of creativity. Then he gets tired of this silly train of thought, and of twisting around to look.

“I hear it’s a tough job, waitering,” he says to Novak. “Customers being pushy or rude and such.”

“Oh, it helped to be a kid, for sure. Customers are much likelier to be nice to you if you’re young and cute, like I was.”

“I’m sure I’d have been a walking disaster at any age,” Roger says. This is a presser, he thinks; just imagine you’re in front of those cameras and tape recorders again, aiming to make the witty joke rather than the unintended insult tomorrow’s tabloid headline. “I’m generally good at telling my arms what to do on court, but off court—”

But he doesn’t finish, because Novak has let slip a snort like a roll of thunder, and is now shaking with laughter.

“Sorry,” he gasps, once able to speak again. “I’m not laughing because I agree. I’m laughing because I tried and just couldn’t do it. Imagine you waiting on a table, I mean. You look like … like …”

Roger smiles tightly, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Like someone born to be waitered to,” Novak says finally. “Is that right? No. Waited upon, I should say.”

He’s supposed to acknowledge the compliment, Roger knows; to express his appreciation with at least a good-natured chuckle. But he can’t, even though he is, honest to God, trying. For he has suddenly been assaulted by the memory of a painfully similar sentiment, delivered unto him a lifetime ago, when both he and the speaker had been near their beginnings and not past their ends, their futures still whole and mysterious and radiant with promise beyond the horizon of the present.

“You make a good prince, I think.”

“A prince of tennis?”

“No, a real prince. Like, son of a king. I imagine you Prince Rogelio of Sweesserland.”

They’d been at Wimbledon when this conversation had happened, he and Rafa; and the latter had made the comment after asking Roger shyly, in the locker room after their ferocious struggle, if any of the dignitaries present in the Royal Box had been honest-to-God representatives of the House of Windsor.

“Switzerland doesn’t have royalty,” Roger had replied, utterly bemused and utterly charmed.

“Then you marry some princess somewhere. Prince Rogelio of England, sí? Or Monaco.”

“I don’t think either England or Monaco has a princess I can marry.”

“Prince Rogelio of Espania, then. And you no marry the princess, because she has, like, six years only? The king and queen take you instead to be their son, because they no have a son, only a daughter. I think they would like you very much.”

Whereupon Roger had bitten his lip even as he’d given in to the smile creasing his face, for he hadn’t known what to make of this silly talk from Rafael Nadal—the long-haired, puppy-eyed warrior who seemed, for one having just lost his first Wimbledon final to Roger, unaccountably friendly, and inexplicably buoyant.

In the present, Novak, also grinning awkwardly but looking rather more like a vampire than a puppy, is apologizing for putting his foot in his mouth. “I meant it as a compliment, Roger, not to suggest that you were … I mean, like, you have that—that _je ne sais quoi_, you know? That thing that lands you in the pages of Vogue.”

Roger stiffens his rueful smile. Yes: he is sure the man who grew up in a war-torn country, playing on bombed-out courts and waiting in line with his parents for milk and bread, had meant it as a compliment that he looked like a natural-born toff.

“I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” he says out loud. Whatever it takes, he thinks, he shall be class and good cheer and forbearance personified, tonight, tomorrow, and for as many more days as he can bear to be. “I think you would have looked good in those pages, too.”

“Nah,” says Novak, eyes abruptly dimming. “I’m too … too …”

He gives up eventually, shrugging, before perking up with relief at the sight of approaching food.

From there on, strangely enough, the conversation eases up—aided, Roger’s sure, by his rapid consumption of a pint of Nepalese beer, which lubricates the wheels of his small talk machine. It is phenomenally reliable, this social contraption of his, honed in the course of a long off court career of corporate marketing and philanthropy upon the entire spectrum of humanity. Roger has charmed people so crass they would have reduced most interlocutors to stupefied silence, even handled and escaped unscathed what he is sure was the occasional sociopath. Novak Djokovic—especially when determined on his end to being chatty and agreeable too—is an easy evening’s work.

It goes fully dark well before they finish dinner. On their way back the narrow streets are somewhat sparser, allowing both their eyes and their feet to roam. The stores are still brilliantly lit, their bead-curtained entrances swishing with custom. Roger slows a few times to inspect windows resplendent with unset gemstones and sumptuous cashmeres, and makes a mental note to acquire something for Mirka when he’s back from the mountains.

They are almost at the hotel before Roger realizes two things—that he and Novak have not exchanged a word since leaving the restaurant; and that he hasn’t minded the silence. He looks over to Novak, expecting for a split second that he has actually lost him two streets back. But there is Novak not a meter away, wearing an expression that routs Roger’s efforts at analysis. All his mind can conjure, instead, is the image of a lamp softly glowing.

At last Novak notices Roger staring at him. “What is it?”

“Oh,” Roger says, caught off guard. “I dunno. You—”

He feels ridiculous, but he says it anyway.

“You look happy.”

For a moment the lamp flickers. Novak cocks an eyebrow, as though Roger has spoken a truth in a language he only half-understands. Then, one side of his mouth crooks up. “I am, actually.”

Why?

“Well”—Novak exhales, then indicates his surroundings with an expansive gesture. “Look. Here we are, in the middle of this amazing city. About to go on an amazing journey to an amazing place. So much ahead of us to see and discover and experience. So much to live for.”

Then he cocks his head at Roger.

And you? his eyes ask.

The look on his face is a searching one, but not unkind.

Roger looks away, unable to speak.

Back in his room, Roger first texts Mirka, then five minutes later, hops on Skype. Two sets of twin faces jostle in the grainy window, shrilly demanding to know what the weather is like in Kathmandu, if he has already seen Everest from the air, if the city is indeed inhabited by legions of monkeys as they have read from somewhere. He tells them it is a balmy twenty-one degrees; that he has unfortunately not seen Everest yet, for it is too far away; and that he will, with any luck, see monkeys tomorrow at the temple he’s visiting. He then renews his promise to be on Skype tomorrow to tell them all about his day, and again the day after too; for as soon as they enter the mountains, there will be bandwidth enough only for texts and the occasional satellite phone call, not for videoconferencing.

Exhausted, Roger then lies down on his bed, intending to rest just long enough to find the energy to brush his teeth, maybe shower again, undress. Instead, he falls asleep instantly.

When he wakes it is predawn. First to achieve sensory awareness are not his eyes, which are shut fast, but his ears, which liven to the sounds of skittering boughs and strange birdcalls out the open window. It’s a habit, this closed-eyed listening, born of another habit—of waking after grueling matches, especially ones ending in defeat, drifting rudderless, no clue where he is or what he is there for. Always in these moments it is the sounds that reorient him, for every five-star hotel suite around the world looks the same.

He knows every city and tournament by ear: midtown Manhattan by its deep pulsing thrum; Rome by its clear church bells; Wimbledon by the sweet quite hush of the English summer.

Now, what he hears reminds him that he is, for once, in a place he’s never been, for a purpose other than winning.

It’s probably the jet lag—and his collapsing to bed almost right after dinner—that’s woken him this early. At home in recent weeks, though, he’d been waking up a lot at 4 a.m. too, for some reason he could not understand. Now, he does what he always has done during these early morning awakenings: grope for his phone and, after swiping impatiently through the latest layer of electronic detritus, scroll up and up and up to a series of texts that had been fresh at the time of the Paris Indoor.

> _Roger, I know you are upset at yourself but please don’t be. You have nothing left to prove, I wish you to understand that. _
> 
> _For me you are always a champion, one like no other. No matter what happen. _
> 
> _Take care of yourself please. _
> 
> _You are more important than your tennis. More than your tennis. _

He’d never responded to them. Now they return his stare accusingly, prick his eyes with pins. Echoes of so many a trophy ceremony, in which he had not been the one to hoist the trophy in the end, but had received another reward: the phantom embrace of his conqueror, felt through words spoken, insinuated in glances stolen.

Echoes from a previous lifetime, Roger thinks, in which he and the other had not yet begun thinking of themselves—either individually or together—in the past tense.

He reads the messages one more time.

Then, swallowing, he puts his phone away, to watch the sky slowly lighten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up: Roger reflects on the early years of his rivalry with Novak, and endures the scariest plane ride of his life.


	2. Lukla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys endure a white-knuckle flight to the most dangerous airport in the world, and play an impromptu football match that brings up bittersweet memories for Roger. Throughout it all, Roger’s convinced Novak is trying to get into his head, and does his best to repay the favor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! Chapter Two, Electric Bugaloo. Jeez did this take a while. If you were following this fic, thanks for your patience! Nearly every section of this (very long) chapter was tough to write, and it didn’t help matters that the US Open intervened. 
> 
> Speaking of which, what a tournament! No. 19 for our favorite Mallorcan (and a dazzling run from my new favorite thing in tennis, Daniil Medvedev), but tough luck for Roger, and even tougher luck for poor Novak. I’ve got another (much shorter) fic brewing that will dramatize a few incidents from this and also the Cincinnati Masters just prior. But that’s still in gestation (who knows if I will even finish it), because finishing this chapter was more important. 
> 
> So, to resume …
> 
> **EDIT (30 Sept '19):** Some micro-touchups applied throughout this chapter. Mostly individual words, cosmetic punctuation, paragraph indentation. Partly because I'm am obsessive tinkerer, and partly because this has not been beta-ed and I keep finding mistakes and rough spots. (If you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with and are willing to beta future installments, drop me a line! Would really appreciate the help and critique.)

Mount Everest, or Chomolungma as those who live in its shadow call it, lies a hundred and sixty kilometers east by northeast of Kathmandu as the crow flies, on the border between Nepal and Tibet.The traveler hoping to test his or her mettle on its flanks, or to view its forbidding peak from the closest possible vantage, must—if coming from within Nepal—journey to the mountain’s southern Base Camp, situated in a cradle of ice and rock 5,364 meters above mean sea level.Unlike on the Tibetan side of Everest, where a highway crossing the windswept plateau joins the city of Lhasa with Base Camp North, there is no paved road that lets one travel by car to Base Camp South.There is instead only a foot path, passable nine months out of the year, which winds sixty-five kilometers from Sagarmatha National Park’s southern border through a pearl-string of sleepy hamlets to its end in the highest of the Himalayas.

The entire route from trailhead to Base Camp, for the fittest among the local mountain dwellers, the Sherpa and the Rai, can be covered in as little as three days.For the visitor unused to rugged terrain or extreme altitude, it is necessarily a much longer journey.Every fifteen kilometers the way in and up, Novak, Roger, and the support crew for their most excellent adventure will have to rest an extra day and night to allow their bodies to adjust to the thin air.At this conservative pace, they can expect to arrive at Everest’s foot nine days after entering Sagarmatha Park, and be back where they started another six or seven days thence.

Naturally, they anticipate everything going to plan.Compared to climbing Everest itself, walking to Base Camp is an everyman’s endeavor, a hit and giggle in tennis terms.But there are still dangers to be minded: tricky bits of trail, March’s still ferociously cold and changeable weather, and the myriad possible effects of scarce oxygen, from which even the hardiest among them are not guaranteed to be immune.

And then there is, Novak cheerfully informs Roger as they’re leaving the hotel boardroom for their guest rooms, the very feat of getting to the trailhead, which they will undertake first thing tomorrow. 

“What’s the deal with that?” Roger asks. 

They’ve just finished the last item of business on Day Two’s schedule—the briefing for Day Three—and he cannot understand what, if anything, is supposed to be difficult about the forty-five minute flight they’ll be taking to the village of Lukla, elevation 2,860 meters, or the half-day’s walk they’ll need to make from Lukla to the hamlet of Phakding just outside Sagarmatha Park’s borders, which is to be their first night’s stop.

“Have you not heard about Lukla’s airport?” Novak replies, grinning like a loon.“It’s _cray_-zy!Number One on most Top Ten Terrifying Airports lists I’ve come across.”

Roger massages both temples vigorously.It’s eleven thirty at night; he’s been awake again since four in the morning; and in between he’s played an hour of cricket and given six hours of tennis lessons and schmoozed another God knows how many.But his head also has to be hurting right now from struggling to understand why Novak—why _anyone_—would spend his free time avidly researching the world’s scariest airports.

Novak, however, is already off like a shot, telling Roger all about Tenzing-Hillary Airport’s legendary and idiosyncratic hazards.The runway the length of a postage stamp, etched atop a mountain ridge, sloping at a gradient of twelve percent.The sheer thousand-meter drop on the approach end; the looming rise on the other, precluding any chance of a go-around if the approach is misjudged.The fickle weather and lack of a radar station, the latter putting pilots entirely at the former’s mercy.The numerous fatal accidents that have happened there over the years.

“Speaking of which, Nepal has, like, one of the worst aviation safety records in Asia, I think.That’s saying something considering how many countries there are in Asia.”

They’re nearly at the stairs that lead up to their rooms by now.Striding in front, Roger swivels around and faces Novak square, blocking his way.

“Why,” he growls, “are you telling me this?” 

All Novak does is meet Roger’s glare coolly, and shrug.“Always best to be prepared, right?”

His tone is noncommittal, as dead calm as his expression.But Roger reads more into either than a blank space.He’s seen this face countless times from across the net; knows what it means, knows what it hides.And right now, even though he knows these cat-and-mouse games belong to a lost age, he feels the undertow of the past pulling him out to sea, and dissolving, along with his grasp of time, the last of his fragile goodwill. 

They hadn’t started out this way, he and Novak, even though enmity between the two of them had, in hindsight, been as unavoidable as rain after thunder.If Roger really digs deep, all he can recall thinking about Novak in the beginning was that he, while hardly likable, was not exactly unlikeable either.The horse-faced prodigy from Serbia lay somewhere beyond the spectrum of like/dislike housing every other inhabitant of Roger’s world—somewhere in a third dimension, all by himself.

He was simply _weird_—the way unicycles, certain varieties of cheese, and deep-sea fish were weird.

“Hey, you’re Roger Federer, aren’t you?I’m called Novak!Novak Djokovic.But to my friends and family I am called Nole." 

The self-introduction at a 2005 Davis Cup event—delivered, God knew why, in German of all languages—had startled Roger, not least because it had taken place in the locker room, with him clad in only a towel, and Novak himself barely more decent.Then a good few years into his reign, Roger had also quite forgotten the last time a no-name player had had the gumption to walk up and greet him, regardless of their state of dress.Sidelong glances, the reverent hushing of conversations as he walked past, very occasionally the stupefied stare, had become the norm in those glory days. 

And Roger, not yet possessed of the immaculate poise that would come to define him, happened actually to prefer this, being treated like a ghost, to having his entire tennis calendar resemble a schoolyard, filled with strangers greeting him as belligerently as though it were the first day of classes.

“Oh,” he’d stammered.Kept his hands on the knot of his towel; decided to use English to respond.“Sorry man, but I have to get dressed and run.Got a sponsor thing I’m late for.”

“Oh,” Novak had said.“Well—um—nice to meet you, I guess.”

Roger had stared dumbly back.

Whereupon Novak—looking no older than twelve with his cactus hair and crimson baby cheeks—had pinched his mouth shut, nodded tightly, and crab-walked away, out of Roger’s sight, to some other corner of the locker room.

Years passed before Roger found himself subject again to so much as a word from Novak off the court.Tennis itself served as their lone mode of communion meanwhile; scrappy, hard-fought matches, their conversations.Had Novak not been—well, Novak, Roger thinks he might, over time, have developed a wary respect for him; slotted him somewhere in between stranger-hood and acquaintanceship.But Novak the tennis player and competitor, it turned out, was not merely weird as Novak the man was, but in fact fully—_utterly_—dislikable. 

He roared and pounded his chest like a Neanderthal when ahead on the scoreboard.

When not ahead, complained left and right of phantom ailments, gaming his opponents with strategically taken medical time-outs.

Screamed obscenities that sounded as grotesque as they were unintelligible.

And, finally, kept an entourage who wore shirts emblazoned with his face, shouted every conversation of theirs in order to derail the opposition, [[1]](https://youtu.be/X2GUpbNKSWs) and jumped and yelped like Pavlov’s dogs every time he scored a point.The Goon Squad, Roger and Mirka soon took to calling them.

“You reckon he’s the real deal?” Roger remembers someone—maybe Stan—asking him one day.That had been sometime in 2007 or 2008, Roger thinks, for he recalls having already met Novak in a Grand Slam final by then—subduing him after a spirited tussle, 7-6, 7-6, 6-4.Would to God Novak weren’t, he’d thought vehemently: for the last thing he could imagine stomaching was running into this plague of a tennis player deep in every draw, having Novak Clownface Djokovic become an actual rival to him.

“Who knows?” he’d said out loud.

Three years later, not one person didn’t know.

Novak was, indeed, The Real Deal—and no one, not Stan Wawrinka or Andy Murray or Rafael Nadal or even Roger himself, had the answer to him.

Were a historian living centuries later to write Roger’s biography—gifted with access to all the numbers, the column inches, the footage of matches, but not his innermost thoughts—Roger has no doubt what sort of story she’d tell.After years spent merely disliking Novak Djokovic, he’d stooped at long last to despising him, because the balance between them had finally tipped one way, and had never tipped back.Over the facts themselves no debate can be had: Novak had indeed, after an early few years struggling against Roger, suddenly figured out how to turn the tables completely—gotten Roger to smash his first racquet in years [[2]](https://youtu.be/Gz19hsMxPkQ?t=32); to lose thrice from the brink of victory [[3]](https://youtu.be/5mLlIwmukh4) [[4]](https://youtu.be/od99MLThJAo?t=12654) [[5]](https://youtu.be/TUikJi0Qhhw?t=15079); to lose, from there on out, over twice as often as he won.

But the idea that Roger hates Novak because he’s a sore loser—a king who lived but could not die by the sword—cannot possibly be further from the truth.Should you require proof, Roger will have you look no further the Wimbledon 2008 final: a defeat more gutting than any Novak had ever handed him, except perhaps for that other Wimbledon final, which he’s blotted completely from his mind.Yes, Roger had sobbed—cut a pathetic picture indeed in the gathering gloom, as Rafa had lifted the trophy that was supposed to have been his. 

But he’d been crying from the humbling realization he’d at last been bested worthily.Beaten fair and square, by someone who had the staggering humility to apologize for winning, and the stupendous class to say, when asked how it felt to beat the world’s best player on his own turf, that this one result hardly made him Roger’s superior or even Roger’s equal—that Roger would always, having won five consecutive Wimbledons, be in a class all by himself. [[6]](https://youtu.be/mHsg2M25PzY?t=21992)

Not in one lifetime or a thousand—however much it hurt to lose—could Roger have brought himself to hate Rafael Nadal, that miracle of an athlete and of a man.

What, then—if Roger could in fact tolerate not being best, not being King of Tennis—had Novak Djokovic done to earn Roger’s everlasting enmity?The answer, Roger has told many a journalist with a serene smile, is that your question is a stupid one.He deeply respects the Serb as a player and a champion, bears him no ill will for the many scintillating victories he’s earned at Roger’s expense. 

All this talk of him _hating_ Novak is just that: talk.

But press Roger harder—promise not to repeat anything he tells you—and he will, if you absolutely insist, answer you with the story of another match.Throughout this particular contest, the semifinal of the 2011 US Open, Roger has outplayed his adversary by a country mile—bagging games and sets through sustained brilliance; conceding them only through his own carelessness.But Novak’s the one who takes home the victory in the end, the ticket to the final—and this is how he does it:

By teetering on the brink of death for two and a half sets, only to roar defiantly back to life late in the fifth. 

By sending Roger’s match point serve at 5-3, 40-15 screaming back cross-court at the speed of sound. 

By rejoining Roger’s command to stand down and surrender with a forehand slap across the face. [[4]](https://youtu.be/od99MLThJAo?t=12654)

And just like that, shattering Roger’s nerve, Roger’s focus, Roger’s will to win, like they’d been so many panes of glass.

In the presser following that match, Roger had lost it when asked how much skill and nerve had gone into the making of that shot.The Return of the Decade, he’d snarled, had clearly been the product of dumb luck and insolence—the act of a degenerate who’d grown up leaning on chance rather than discipline in extremis. [[7]](https://youtu.be/Istcd6U_J9s?t=206) For speaking his mind then, he’d ended up getting years of flak—been branded salty, unsporting, condescending in certain toxic reaches of the Internet.But all Roger regrets, to this day, is not having also said everything else he’d been thinking—which also happens to be the answer to your burning question:

That Novak Djokovic could hardly be endured because he was, atop being a filthy lucky bastard and a beastly piece of work, a con artist.

Because subterfuge, even more than chance, had gone into the making of most of his victories over Roger, including this one. 

Because he’d overcome Roger not by playing better, but by fucking with his mind.

And because he had, as always, rubbed it all in afterwards at the net—shaking Roger’s hand calmly, a look of supreme indifference on his face, when Roger knew he had to have been, on the inside, beside himself with murderous glee.

Back in his hotel room in the present, which he has somehow managed to get to without decking Novak, Roger dials Mirka, fingers trembling.

“I knew it!” he seethes without preamble in Swiss German, the moment she picks up.“I fucking knew this would happen.” 

There’s a lengthy pause before she replies.“This is about him, isn’t it?” 

“He tells me we’ll die flying to—”

“Not right now, Rogi,” she snaps.“I’m driving, anyway.Send me a text.”

And watch your language, Roger hears in the tone of her voice, as the line goes dead.

Fuming, he obeys before throwing himself in the shower.There’s still no response when he emerges an eternity later; so he turns to packing and tidying up his room, chucking things around so loudly he’s sure Novak can hear next door. 

It’s one a.m. when he finally crawls into bed, thoroughly put out at the knowledge he’ll have to be up again in three hours if he’s to avoid delaying the mass exodus from hotel to airport. 

One thirty when, just as he’s about to slip under sleep’s dark waters, his phone finally pings.

> _Text me when you get to Lukla.And when you do, if you do, just be grateful. _
> 
> _I love you._

He stares.Massages his eyes with the back of his hand, then exhales.

_I love you too_, he replies.

As always, Roger tries his best to abide by Mirka’s advice.But it takes his damndest.

And his damnedest proves very nearly insufficient when he learns what he does the following morning, sitting in a bus on the fog-smothered tarmac of Tribhuvan Airport with Novak and Vanja and the rest of the team.

“What do you mean, _this_ is our ride?” 

They’re parked next to a hangar, in front of which sits the smallest, saddest airplane Roger has ever laid eyes on.A flight school workhorse, he’d thought, or someone’s second-hand toy—for he was sure they’d be taking the helicopter they’d driven past just before stopping, whose blades were already beating and which, he can see if he cranes his neck, is presently being loaded with the film crew’s mountains of equipment.But the heli, he can’t believe he’s just heard, will be taking only one cameraman, for it will be the chase plane filming _their_ plane—this battered metal gnat.

Roger is most emphatically not a nervous flyer. But the idea of riding _this_ thing into the world’s most dangerous airport is also most emphatically not helping him keep his breakfast down.

“C’mon, Roger!” Novak chirps, clapping his shoulder.“There’s a first time for everything.It’ll be fun, I promise you.”

Before Roger can snap a reply, someone barges through the open doors of their bus to have an urgent word with Vanja.The runway’s just been closed, and nothing is to leave Tribhuvan till the weather lifts and air traffic control has given the all-clear—whenever that should happen.

Just like waiting for a match to be called, Roger thinks—except he has never had to kill time while being forced to interact with the opposition. 

Or to contemplate his mortality, for that matter.

“Novak,” he says, trying to sound as normal as possible.“Is this really necessary?”

“Is what really necessary?”

Roger jabs a thumb at the plane just outside their window, then splays his palm in the approximate direction of the helicopter.Moves his hand back and forth in exasperation.

“Why of course!What’s a documentary about trekking in the Himalayas without a few glamour shots of us flying into the mountains?”

“You call _that_ piece of junk glamorous?”

“That ‘piece of junk,’” says Novak, sanctimoniously raising an eyebrow, “is a de Havilland Twin Otter, a plane especially designed for handling short runways.Nine out of ten flights to Lukla are run on these little marvels.Now, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten we’re pretending to be average tourists?Or would you like to come off looking like a rich asshole in the film?”

A breath of sun suddenly inks in his laugh lines, brightens the untimely frost on his stubble.But all Roger sees are Novak’s eyes, bright and shrewd as the day they’d first met his own in the locker room at the Davis Cup.He’s still twenty-four on the inside, Roger thinks, fear and rage rising in tandem.Still the diabolical punk who’d crouched low and smirked right before hitting that miracle forehand return—bent on mind-fucking Roger, except now there’s not even a net in the way. 

He mumbles something about preferring to take the helicopter instead, optics be damned.

“Warning!” Novak bellows suddenly.“Code violation warning, Mr Federer, for unsportsmanlike conduct!” 

A yelp of laughter explodes from the back of the bus, and Roger whirls around to see, to his instant fury and chagrin, that one of the camera guys is still present and on duty, pointing a camcorder straight at them.

“Look,” says Novak—all serious now, but also gentle.“The heli’s not necessarily safer, Roger, you know that.And the guys who fly these small planes do it several times a day every day so they can eat!Are our lives worth more than theirs?”

Roger reaches for the top handle of his day pack.Grabs it, before his fist can make contact with Novak’s jawline.

“I’ll take the code violation, thanks very much.”

Still, he ends up following Novak and the others onto the Twin Otter, once the haze has thinned and they’re given the all-clear to be on their way.It’s indeed smaller than any plane he’s ever been on: six narrow, cloth-upholstered seats on one side, six on the other, a curtain the size of a towel separating the cabin from the cockpit.The plane’s a charter from a commercial airline, for there’s a solitary flight attendant in red lipstick and low heels, going around with a basket of sweets.When it’s his turn to be greeted, Roger looks elsewhere, too embarrassed all of a sudden to meet her bright smile. 

The seat he’s ended up in is under one wing, giving him a prime view of an ancient propeller and a line of rusting steel rivets.The sight sets his stomach churning anew, so as they taxi toward the runway, he rummages in his bag for something to eat.But as they line up for departure and the scream of engines invades the cabin, he changes his mind about the chocolate bar he’s taken out.He’ll save it as a treat for the other end, for after they’ve arrived at Lukla.

If they even get there, that is.

The first part of their flight goes normally enough.It’s sunny now, and light is glancing in shards off the propeller next to Roger as it whirls merrily, merrily, wafting them higher and higher.This is nothing like the sleek jets he’s hopscotched the world in, but he finds he’s actually OK with it so far, with the close quarters and deafening clatter and whistling of rushing air right outside his window.Now feeling like a very good sport indeed, he leans back in his seat, eyes shut, and lets the din fill every crevice in his head, smother every thought and quiet every singing nerve.

About fifteen or twenty minutes in, when Kathmandu’s urban sprawl has given way first to a steady mosaic of paddies and canals, and then to an ocean of rolling hills, Roger feels a sharp tap on his shoulder.Novak, seated across the aisle from him, is pointing at something out his own window, gesturing for Roger to look too. 

A thin line of white stretching from seven to one o’ clock is resolving slowly into jagged peaks.

Roger reaches for his phone, and as wonder overwhelms him, forgets what for.

It’s hard seeing everything from where he’s sitting, so he accepts Novak’s invitation to come over and squeeze in close.Layered between endless skies and hazy foothills, the Himalayas look like celestial icebergs drifting in a watercolor sea.Every single peak seems famous, but Roger doesn’t know any names.He asks Novak, who rattles off a long list—Annapurna, Cho Oyu, Makalu, Ama Dablam, Kanchenjunga.

“I don’t know which one’s which, though!” he shouts in Roger’s ear.

Finally Roger remembers he’d wanted to take pictures, so he unlocks his phone, is toying with the zoom trying to crop out the plane’s wing, when suddenly he is thrown forwards toward the window, then just as quickly tossed backwards into the aisle, into the gap between his seat and the one in front of his.

“Seatbelts, please!” someone up front yells. 

Roger hauls himself upright.The whole plane, fine just seconds ago, is now trampolining wildly.A brave soul hands him back his phone, which has momentarily gone fugitive down the aisle, and he staggers back into his seat, fumbles around and does up his seatbelt as tight as it’ll go. 

Out his window, the view has disappeared, and when he next looks round, the Himalayas have vanished too, snuffed out by a wall of white.

“Who likes roller coasters?!” he hears Novak exclaim.Roger’s _this_ close to cuffing the asswipe good across the ear—the aisle’s narrow enough for it—when he sees the camera pointed at them from three rows upcabin.This had better win an Oscar if we get out of this alive, he thinks, as rage and exasperated admiration vie within him. 

“It sure is kind of bumpy right now,” he finally manages to wheeze.

He then tries coaxing a smile for posterity, for he will not be playing the feckless coward to Novak’s action movie hero; but just then they’re slammed by another wall of air, one that sends them levitating off their seats and upsets the camera and wrests a startled yelp from Novak, and Roger reaches for the seat in front of him, grips the headrest with white knuckles, and fights the urge to vomit.

Just imagine you’re on a jet ski, he thinks, as he inhales through his nose and the plane recovers shakily from its swoon.The air underneath you is solid, like water; you’re bouncing off some breakers, crossing a ship’s wake at full throttle.It’s worked on his children, this little mind trick for dealing with rough weather in midair.

But right now his mind is refusing to cooperate: for the whine of the propellers and the aerodynamic roar of air against metal are resolving into high-pitched screams, a full Centre Court’s worth of them; and instead of transporting him to crystalline harbors, to moments on holiday lived out in kingly splendor, the cabin’s gyrations are recalling the way the grass had seemed to undulate, like a slow-motion earthquake, under his faltering legs as he’d set out at the referee’s command for the baseline. 

“Time!Fifth and final set, tie-break!”

He’s about to vomit again.Stop it, please, just stop it.

Your fault you’re here, a voice in his head talks back. 

But this has happened already.Twice.I don’t want to go through this again.

Tough luck, says the voice as he crouches low to receive Novak’s serve.And it ends here either way.So buckle the fuck down.Make those lost tiebreaks and match points irrelevant.

And Roger tries, honest to God._Tries_, because one cannot say one _makes_ or has _made_ something such-and-such until he’s actually done it.But there’s something wrong with his reflexes, which have gone all limp and cottony; and something terribly, awfully wrong with his forehand, which misses by a nautical mile one, two, three times in a row.Now it’s changeover time, and the scoreboard says 4-2 Djokovic, and he’s feeling the world around him slow to a viscous crawl, the roar of the crowd distort into a low moan, as he realizes Novak is three points away from doing this to him _again_.

For fuck’s sake, don’t think that.It’s not over yet.

Get your fucking head back in the match, now.

You’re the one in control here, Roger._Focus_.

Your racquet.Your point.Your match. 

He’s on the Royal Box end now, can feel the stares of the Windsors and their glitterati friends boring down his neck.The sensation oddly buoys him, winches him up like an invisible cable strung through his spine.They’re all on my side, they all want _me_ to win, and how on earth can I not win if they’re all on my side? 

But after that next point won on a second serve he’s loaded with enough kick to stun a mule, [[8]](https://youtu.be/TUikJi0Qhhw?t=17642) his feet grow roots and he can only watch, dumbstruck, as Novak slams a winner across an open deuce court, 5-3 Djokovic. [[9]](https://youtu.be/TUikJi0Qhhw?t=17680)

Then Novak really pulls the trigger.Unleashes a live round after all the crosscourt blanks he’s exchanged with Roger—a backhand bullet blazing down the line, one that leaves a green vapor trail behind it and thuds off the backstop just as Roger skids to a splay-legged halt astride its path. [[10]](https://youtu.be/TUikJi0Qhhw?t=17726)

6-3, Djokovic, the umpire intones.

Triple championship point.

The ghastly montage shorts out there, picks up after it’s all over and done and Novak is walking toward the net.It’s this glitch, strangely, that boots Roger fully back into the terrifying present, the discovery that there are some traumas beyond the power of other traumas to resurrect.He glances over to his left, expecting to see Novak leering at him, aglow with jubilation at seeing his rival a pathetic trembling mess. 

But Novak is sitting with his eyes closed, still and calm as a prayer through all the shaking.Hands folded neatly in his lap, head lolling with every bump and lurch, as if asleep.

As if already dead.

Yes, Roger suddenly remembers.That, strangely, was how he’d been that whole match.No lion-like roars of joy or frustration, no strings of Serbian profanity unleashed at the hecklers discombobulating his serves.In the hurricane sea of the crowd, braying 15,000-strong for Roger to kill him now, kill him now, he’d just floated along, all stoic resignation, all cold-blooded focus. 

All the way till the very end, when he’d done none of the usual theatrics—just let a stunned smirk slip onto his face, dawdled about dazedly, then crouched low for a taste of Centre Court grass, like a shipwreck survivor embracing land. [[11]](https://youtu.be/TUikJi0Qhhw?t=17877)

It had bothered Roger out of his skin then—this otherworldly un-Novak-like calm.

And though he has no idea why, it scares the shit out of him now.

He braces himself against the seat in front of him.What will the world think, he wonders desperately, when they hear the two of us died together, falling out of the sky into the Himalayas?

God sure has a sense of irony, they might say. 

Or they might be furious, he thinks, picturing Mirka and his parents and his children sobbing in black. 

Or they might call it fake news and still be on the lookout for us two twenty years later. 

Or they might just shrug.

The shaking ceases, and the view out Roger’s window clears.The ground is alarmingly close, and rising, serrated ridges and the tops of trees gaining definition by the second.But just as Roger’s about to put his head down and close his eyes and consign himself at last to God’s hands, he sees it float into view.

An airstrip, scarred into the mountains ahead, nearly level with them.

Lengthening steadily as they wobble closer.

They hurtle past the lip of the scarp—kiss the asphalt—skid uphill.

Then it’s over, they’re standing still and the propellers are dying down, and Roger remembers to breathe again. [[12]](https://imgur.com/gallery/ory5Lz2)

He stumbles out of the plane as if drunk.Lukla greets him with a blast of cold air, is all bright colors and sharp shapes and everywhere staggering peaks.Everywhere noise, too, until Roger realizes the roar overhead is the filming helicopter, doing a brief victory lap above their heads before arcing away for the heliport on the other side of the runway.He drops his gaze back to the tarmac now, sees figures across the way—one of which has just shaken hands enthusiastically with Vanja, who was first out the plane, and is now jogging to meet him as he trudges forth, hand on head to keep his cap from flying off in the stiff breeze. 

“Namaste, Mr Federer!Welcome to Lukla.Please, I take your bag for you.”

No, it was quite all right.He—

Is not quite all right, he realizes, as he stumbles again.

A steel grip stops him face-planting on the asphalt.“It’s OK.I got you.”

The day pack’s disappeared off Roger’s back, but his legs still feel as though three sets of tennis have been dumped on them suddenly.“What’s going on?”

“It’s the altitude; you’re not used to it.This is normal.It will pass in a moment.”

There’s a tourniquet, too, being tightened over his head.Behind him, Novak, pale as a sheet, is also reluctantly being relieved of his day pack, while a brigade of porters, come out of nowhere, is busy disemboweling their Twin Otter, constructing a pyramid of duffel bags atop one rickety cart.

“Thanks,” Roger croaks, looking back around at his savior, who comes up barely to his shoulder.“Mr ...”

“Bibek,” says the man, grinning.“No ‘Mister,’ just Bibek.Come this way, please.”

Roger expects to be led into the squat building right in front of them, which he supposes is what passes for the terminal of Lukla Airport.Instead he is shown through a gate in a chain-link fence to the building’s left, which opens onto a cobblestone path leading around the back end of the runway.From here the entire strip, backdropped against distant evergreen ridges, can be seen in all its awful, sloping glory.But Roger has no desire to stop and gawk—it’s far too soon—so Bibek carries on, stepping lightly over jutting flagstones and every other step cautioning Roger to watch his, till at last they arrive someplace where the sound of idling propellers is but a dull buzz, and there is a distinct feel of human habitation. 

It’s a lodge, by the looks of it: a brightly painted horseshoe-shaped building, encircling a sprawling lawn, on one side of which are set low picnic tables.Just beyond are the beginnings of the village proper: rows of Technicolor roofs, terraced against a jade mountainside, and strands of prayer flags forming ghostly power lines.

They’ve been spotted coming from afar, for a brace of ladies is already fussing about one of the tables, arranging plates and mugs and pitchers.With motherly assiduousness Bibek has Roger take a seat at another table, deposits Roger’s day pack at Roger’s feet, tells him not to worry, he will bring him his refreshments, he insists.Roger obeys dazedly, sidling one leg then the other over the bench; nearly leaps upright again as something underfoot lets loose a whine.

“Oh!” he exclaims, peering underneath the table.“Sorry there, pal.My bad.”

The dog—an enormous shaggy black creature—looks blearily at him, then goes back to sleep.

The rest of their party trickle in gradually, like an army of ants.Slowly Roger sips the sweet milk tea Bibek’s brought him; lets it harden his watery bones and anchor his rattled mind as he watches the porters in action.They balance staggering loads atop their heads, yet move nonetheless in springing gazelle-like strides: a ballet of motion, with Bibek at the center of it all, choreographing, barking commands, motioning Group equipment here, Personal bags there.

Novak’s curiously one of the last to arrive—swaying loopily from foot to foot, like a bicycle pedaled too slowly; laughing loudly alongside the man holding his day pack.

In due time, all finally present and accounted for and restored with tea and buttery shortbread (except Novak, who declines on dietary grounds, and makes a show of his reluctance), there are introductions.As Roger’s suspected, Bibek—surname Kulung Rai—is to be their guide, the man responsible for leading them all safely to their destination and back.He’s brought two assistants with him, for local regulations decree one guide for every four clients; Mohit and Pasang, it is then proudly mentioned, are cousins from the same village, and brothers.

“_We’re_ the brothers,” Pasang says, throwing an arm around Mohit.“_Bibek_ is our cousin.In case you wonder how what Bibek said can really be true.”

“Oh, shush,” huffs Bibek.

There’s a head’s difference in height, Roger notes, between each of the three: Bibek a Nepalese Diego Schwartzman, Pasang a Del Potro-sized giant, Mohit the happy average of the two.The porter brigade, fifteen strong, are also invited to recite their names, and step out one by one out of the neat ranks they’ve formed to do so—some proudly, others shyly—before abruptly dispersing into action again.

“Gear check!” announces Bibek, as the men demolish the Jenga tower of duffels they’d just built, reuniting each bag with its owner.

They’re ordered to take everything out—absolutely everything, because they’ve likely left essentials in their duffels and freighted their day packs with useless weight, they’ve had so little time in previous days to organize things, and will also have to repack everything anyway, because they’ll be getting handouts of supplies.Soon the lawn is the site of a phantom tornado strike, everywhere shoes and clothes and gear and food and garish sportswear colors.Roger, now a little more confident in his legs, climbs atop his table to snap a bird’s-eye shot of the chaos for his Instagram, then descends to view his own exploded duffel and day pack with dismay.The big black dog asleep under his table is now awake, nosing about his woolens, and is perilously close to discovering the supply of chocolate concealed in his trainers.

“And you aren’t even climbing!” says Pasang, laughing, as Roger grumpily sneaks a glance over at Novak—who, unlike him, has deconstructed everything methodically and has now got all his things catalogued in orderly piles, shirts stacked in descending order of warmth, medicine bottles mustered like toy soldiers.

“I know.I have an alpinist friend.Ended up packing half the things he told me to bring.Still—”

Just then his supply delivery comes: two shopping bags’ worth, which sets Roger to wondering how the hell everything will fit into his bags, both of which already had been bursting to the full when he’d emptied their contents out onto the lawn.

“You will regret it,” says Pasang, as Roger considers chucking away two of the three rolls of toilet paper he’s received.“Most precious thing you can have in those mountains.Now don’t worry about how to pack everything.Let’s see what we need for the trail today first.”

By the time Roger’s all squared away—there’s a stupid amount of stuff to get through, and Pasang’s so patient and thorough and meticulous it’s as though this were a pre-launch check for NASA—the sun’s changed positions, and the sky, half covered at the hour of their arrival, has become an unbroken dome of blue.Roger rights his day pack, somehow made a few kilos lighter by Pasang’s genius; stretches as he stands up.Bibek and Vanja and their director of photography, Oliver, are now standing in a huddle with the remnants of the porter brigade, debating how to split the group equipment. 

Leaning surreptitiously against the camera cases, Roger has noticed just now, is a solitary racquet bag—black, unbranded, large enough maybe for six sticks. 

Novak’s nowhere to be seen, so Roger lustrates about a bit, heads into the lodge, goes back outside.At last he finds him lying on a strip of grass on the other side of the trail that’s led them here—face up, eyes closed, sprawled like a starfish.Beyond a picket fence bordering the grass, a couple of football pitches away, lies the infamous runway they arrived on, sloping left to right to the drop-off like a vast gray slide. 

And further beyond, a wall of silent, looming peaks—none snow clad (for they are neither high up nor far in enough yet), yet all already eclipsing, with their primordial savagery, every memory Roger has of the prim mountains back home.

There’s a steady parade of traffic gracing the runway—conjured, presumably, by the weather window.For a while Roger just stands there; watches a departure float off into the valley and a pair of fresh arrivals alight like seagulls, thinking how graceful and easy and un-terrifying it all looks when you’re not aboard. 

Then—just as he’s starting to grow bored, and has gone on to thinking how, were he friends with Novak and in his twenties or thirties instead of his forties, he might put a foot down on Novak’s stomach right about now—Novak cracks open one eye.

“Enjoying the sun?” Roger asks, digging his foot hastily into the grass. 

“Hmm,” says Novak languidly.“The breeze, too.So fresh up here.” 

He inhales deeply, closes the eye. 

“I like this day.I like how sunny and cold it is at the same time.I like the mountains and their robes of mist and the secrets they hold.I like Lukla and traveling to new places and being alive.” 

If Roger hadn’t seen death this morning and lived to tell the tale, he’d have done either of two things this very instant: screamed at the top of his lungs, or slapped Novak upside the face.

Or both, in no particular order.

But now he flings himself down on the grass next to Novak, in the same attitude.Tries the same breathing exercise; tries to commune with nature and the infinitesimal present and the indisputable fact of his prolonged existence in the same way.

In the distance a thin metallic whine surges: another plane, propellers blasting, starting its belting run down the asphalt.

Roger waits till it’s purred off into the valley before speaking. 

“What’s with the racquet bag?”

“Hmm?” 

It takes Novak a few seconds to come back online, another few to compute. 

“Oh.This kind of was my daughter’s idea, actually.She thought that once we get to Base Camp—assuming we do get there—and if there’s a good piece of flat ground there, that it would be cool to play the highest tennis match in history.”

A corner of Roger’s stomach drops.So he still plays, he thinks, a second before asking himself why the news—if this can be classified as news at all—has hit him like this.

“To settle once and for all which of us is the greater?” he’s saying, before he can stop himself.

Fuck.He shoves a lopsided smile on his face as quick as he can; knows that even then this one’s awful as far as jokes go.Yet somehow Novak, whose sole mission all morning has seemed to be to incite Roger into starting the inevitable war, now declines to register this provocation, to pull the pin on this grenade that’s just been offered him.

“Just—you know.”He shrugs.“For fun.” 

Roger rolls his eyes.Then hurriedly glances sideways to establish Novak has not seen.

“I dunno, man.I came here to get away from tennis, remember?Gonna need an incentive to interrupt my detox holiday with an exho.”

He bares a grin at Novak, who—to his satisfaction—is now the one acting like a grade-schooler, rolling his eyes. 

“If you insist on making this a contest about which of us is the greater, then fine.”There’s steel lining the buttery contours of Novak’s voice, the voice Roger secretly admits would make dignified newscasts and hypnotizing audiobooks.“If I win, I get all your Slams.”

Roger skeptically eyes Novak’s scrawny neck, his reedy wrists and rail-thin torso.“All right.Fair enough.”

“Plus all your prize money, adjusted for inflation.”

Now Roger’s gaze has moved on to Novak’s knees, which jut so far out they interrupt his stork-like legs like exclamation points.“Sure.If you insist.”

“And _all_ your endorsement fees.” 

“Um.” 

Roger, urbane gentleman that he is, will joke gladly about almost everything—almost. 

“No.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, I meant it as a compliment!” Novak exclaims.“You make more from selling expensive watches and chocolates than I will in ten lifetimes.Of course I want all your endorsements.”

“Which is why you’ll get them over my dead body,” Roger snarls.

He glares at Novak now, all pretense of banter shed.Novak returns the favor, and there they lie for several moments—glowering at each other across two arm-lengths of grass, the coarse putter of propellers and helicopter blades ever-present and ever-continuing in the distance.

“You can have my jet,” Roger finally says.

Novak reorients his gaze heavenward, crooks a long-suffering eyebrow.Fine.

“And you?” Roger prods him.“C’mon, be fair now.”

Novak’s shoulder is too far away to punch, so he settles for grabbing Novak’s wrist.Bare of watch or armband—for Roger’s lying to Novak’s right—it fits just inside Roger’s grasp, through which Roger instantly registers Novak’s pulse, bright and rapid as the flutter of a bird’s wings. 

Novak flinches as if someone’s just welded him to a live circuit.Does not, however, fight Roger’s grasp. 

“My Miami Beach condo, then.”

“Your _condo_?”

“Hey, it’s a very nice condo, with a very nice view—”

“No way any condo’s worth as much as my jet.As any jet!”

“Then you can take the fucking sailboat too!” Novak practically bellows, freeing his wrist with a defiant twist. “Happy?”

He’s massaging the wrist now, as if Roger’s somehow managed to hurt it just by holding it like that for a few seconds. It’s so absurd, this and the look on his face and the trajectory taken by this entire conversation thus far, that Roger feels something in him snap that instant. 

“_What_?” Novak bawls, as Roger goes limp with laughter.

“We’re going to need a notary to take all of this down,” Roger somehow manages eventually to say. 

“What, you don’t trust me?”

But Roger keeps on laughing, laughing, laughing.He hasn’t laughed this long or hard in weeks—months; and no way is he stopping if it’s riling Novak up this wonderfully 

“Let’s just make it the Slams, man,” he wheezes at last, when the madness has finally run its course.“Makes things easier.”

“Agreed,” mutters Novak, eyeing Roger as though he has a few moments ago sprouted a second head.“Winner takes all Slams, it is.”

Again a (relative) silence falls, during which Roger—now feeling awkward—casts about for a diversion, a fig leaf: anything to impede Novak from reflecting further on this brief glimpse he’s caught of Roger’s dark, diseased soul. 

What he comes up with, which happens to be the only thing his oxygen-impoverished brain can think of, he’ll defend as exactly that: a brain fart brought on by his brush with death and the thin mountain air. 

“You know though, what I was actually thinking at first when you said the _highest_ match of tennis in history?”He pauses, for suspense.“I wasn’t thinking about settling scores or anything.I was thinking it sounded like … like—” 

He pauses again, this time involuntarily. 

“Like what?”

“Oh … I dunno.Like what would happen after a wild weekend in Amsterdam.”

Yet another pause.

“I mean,” Roger continues, “can you imagine, how crazy it would be?To play tennis while stoned out of your mind.”

He’s flushing with pride, he’s actually said it.But Novak—freaking Novak, whose’s made a whole side career out of cracking jokes but who this morning cannot seem to take a single one straight—goes on to derange expectations once more, to keep Roger in a perpetual tailspin of confusion.

“Being stoned probably would not make for a very interesting or competitive match,” he’s saying slowly, almost to himself.“It would probably be worse even than playing drunk, considering what we know about the effects of hemp leaf on vision, motor control, reaction time, et cetera et cetera … ” 

He trails off into silence briefly—is clearly, to Roger’s amazement, actually _thinking_ about this. 

“Cocaine, now, on the other hand—”

An incredulous giggle escapes Roger.“Are you speaking from experience?”

“I will _not_ dignify that question with a response, Roger.”

“Hey, man, you brought cocaine into the conver—”

The end of Roger’s sentence rockets skyward in a scream.

For someone’s suddenly shoved Roger’s face into a car wash.That, and dropped a half-ton carpet onto his chest, a carpet that huffs and moves and has got a giant bushy tail that it’s wagging like a jump rope. 

By the time Roger’s succeeded in coaxing the dog out of his face and off his stomach—the same shaggy black dog he’d found napping under his table, nosing through his underwear—his entire front’s sopping wet with drool, and Novak has rolled a whole body length away and is slowly on his way back.

“Oh, shut up!” Roger yells, surveying Novak—who’s got his hands covering his face—then his clothes, then Novak again in disgust.

But Novak’s too far gone to hear him.Is sobbing, practically choking with laughter, until the dog realizes here too is another interesting human being, and then it’s again Roger’s turn to slide into hysterics at the sight and sound of Novak flipping his shit. 

On balance of probability, it occurs to Roger as he clutches his stomach and turns over face-down on the grass, someone’s been filming them this whole time, has caught on tape this entire pissing contest from start to finish.

But he’ll worry about it later, he decides, as he inhales the smell of the mountains between each gasp of hilarity.

At last every bag’s been sorted, every preliminary accounted for, and they’re on their feet, day packs hitched up and trekking poles deployed, and on their way.It’s just the main trekking party left now, the two stars and two Foundation assistants and production team and guides, for the porters have already gone ahead, racing to deliver their impossible loads to the evening's destination before the guests themselves arrive.Off the latter lumber now like a marching band, clacking in tempo, the unmissable Pasang in front, Mohit and Bibek bringing up the rear.All three cameras have been deployed for this momentous occasion, and Oliver himself is doing a constant slow orbit of Roger and Novak, who march abreast, stubbornly looking everywhere but at each other.

By now the high from the tea and biscuits and hysterics has worn off, and Roger’s feeling sullen and a little tired.Sad, too, that his canine friend, who’d followed him out of the lodge’s courtyard, is suddenly nowhere to be seen, after having padded alongside a good ten minutes.

“Don’t be sad,” says Bibek.“Plenty of stray dogs in these mountains.” 

Eventually Roger spots the mastiff, staring glumly from where the flagstone path has fed into Lukla’s main street. From too far away; so he settles for taking a photo of him, and making him an Instagram celebrity, instead of running back to pet him one last time.

In only a few minutes they come within sight of the main road’s end, marked by a high archway painted green and ornate with swirls.Here, Pasang tells them in a dramatic hush, is where the trail to Everest begins.A few children are playing football in the archway’s shadow, while nearby half a dozen or so older villagers are resting, enormous baskets loaded with goods sitting at their feet.But Novak, who’s a few steps ahead of Roger, is staring not at the portal or the people or the giant black rooster strutting across their path just now, but at a dark doorway off to their right.

“Of course!” says Bibek, when Novak asks whether he can go in.“Do have a look.It’s the largest prayer wheel in all of Solokhumbu.”

It’s actually a barrel, not a wheel, Roger thinks pedantically upon following Novak in.Tall as an umpire’s chair, wider than his arm span, it’s got sinuous gold writing, sacred mysteries, snaking over its crimson belly.They are to be spun clockwise, always and only clockwise, he learns from Novak, as the latter grabs one of the wooden spokes extending out the base of this curiosity.

“Because the flow of cosmic energy is unidirectional,” is Novak’s How is this not obvious to you? response, when Roger wonders aloud why.“Does the sun ever go from west to east?”

But wheels could be spun either way.Whereas the _sun_—

“Violate the flow of nature’s energy at your peril, Roger!” Novak exclaims, trotting round and round like a carousel pony.“Spin anti-clockwise and you’ll unleash cosmic wrath and chaos instead of harmony.Now grab on and say it with me!_Om mani padme hum_ …” 

Feeling well short of cosmically harmonious, Roger leaves the unspooling of the wheel’s numinous blessings and protections to Novak, and instead turns his attention to the walls of this dark chamber, on which are painted curious figures.

On the wall right in front of him is a man.Lightly bearded, and dressed in a robe, he’s seated cross-legged on a rainbow throne.His head is cocked, his right hand raised, and his gaze, which the artist has rendered with uncommon liveliness, is kind and knowing.Let me let you in on a secret, he seems to be saying with both body and gaze; but what that secret is Roger cannot for his life guess. 

To the right of the Whisperer of Secrets is another man, pale as the moon.Moonface sits in the same attitude—looks benevolent, too, except he’s got four arms, one pair clasped serenely before his heart, the other raised alongside either ear in a strange salute.Roger examines his long fleshy ears and spindly fingertips; thinks back to the galleries he’d dashed through on the way to Europe’s old masters on his blue moon visits to museums, where he’d glimpsed similar ears and fingers and eyes and feet under soft gold lighting.Now he regrets his incuriosity, for maybe he’d know something now about Moonface as well as the Whisperer.Why he’s got four arms; what his mysterious gestures mean.

Making another quarter turn, he then comes upon something even stranger.The figure’s still human, but she’s green as a lagoon, bathed in the light of a red sun.Her complexion renders her eyes luminous as moonstones, makes her lips bright as gore.Her splayed hands, sparkling with jewels, spell warnings to Roger. 

Mind your words and thoughts. 

Own your sins.

Or what? Roger thinks, as he turns to the last wall—the wall in the darkest part of the room, opposite the doorway.

Whereupon he freezes.For a monster is leering back at him: a dark blue demon with staring silver dollar eyes and wolf’s teeth.He—It—is naked except for a tiger skin loincloth, prancing on bear-claw feet against a sea of flames.Above, beneath, all around, smaller figures writhe in open-mouthed agony.

Roger stares.He’d never seen the Devil depicted in a Christian painting, he’s realized for the first time.Hell itself, yes, but not Satan—certainly not in any image he’d seen hanging in a church.

And why was this, this hiding away of evil, which he’d always taken for granted, done at home but not here? Was evil easier to confront when buried away and out of sight, like disease and death and hatred almost always were?

Or when rendered manifest, allowed to grace a wall and stare you in the face?

Feeling cold all over all of a sudden, Roger starts for the doorway.

Finds, when he's gained the refuge of sunlight, that he’s been inside longer than he’d realized.

For all outside is now pandemonium.The football match has exploded—swallowed the entire narrow street, and acquired at least a dozen more participants, one of whom is twice as tall and several times as old as everyone else, and is presently attempting to slot the ball past a ferocious gauntlet of pint-sized defenders.

“It’s Serbia versus Nepal!” Novak is yelling.Off to one side, the cameras are eating it up, tracking Novak like rifles as he careens across the cobblestones. 

From the doorway’s shadow, the demon’s gaze still pricking the back of his neck, Roger watches.For a man who very nearly fell off this mortal coil a year ago, Novak’s impressively lively, indeed inspiringly limber.But he is not a football natural, Roger can tell just by looking; could never have moonlighted for Barcelona or Bayern, not even at the height of his absurd physical powers, when he’d slalomed about the baseline on greased feet, skidding into splits so deep they’d hurt even to behold. [[13]](https://youtu.be/8FbdM5OlR6k?t=6) Roger, who’d played seriously till his teenage years, had—still has—a better feel for a ball under his foot, a greater gift for keeping it glued to his toes while at a full run. 

And even then, Roger Federer most certainly was not football’s greatest loss.

Of who that was—who that is—there can be no doubt. Not, at least, in Roger’s mind.

Just then the ball sails into Roger’s field of vision, nicks his ankle.A chorus of children’s voices swells: Give it here; no, here; no, here.But a salt breeze is kicking up Roger’s hair; and he’s now curiously hearing Spanish instead of Nepalese.

“Lo siento, lo siento!” someone’s shouting faintly, as he sits up and contemplates the ball rolling toward him.

He sets his book down; stretches with a grimace.Just a free kick beyond is a vast unbroken line of blue, the jewel-bright Caribbean.But unbroken and jewel bright are hardly how he’s been feeling these past few days, having washed up here in Florida without a title from Indian Wells.

Having arrived, instead, his half years’ winning streak in pieces.Shattered, to add insult to injury, well before either the prize money or the opposition had become respectable in Palm Springs.

He’s going to do better in this next one, he’s been telling himself nonstop.Go all the way, win it like he had last year.

He has to.

The ball’s come to a full stop now, just inside the shade cast by the umbrella tenting his chaise.Which means Roger has to do something about it, even if it’s just nudging it back in the general direction of the surf, back into public territory, where it will no longer be his business.But before he can coax himself upright, there are footsteps, panting, spraying sand, announcing the arrival of the distant apologizer.

Who greets Roger with the hesitant beginnings of a smile, just as he halts just beyond the shade’s rim.Or maybe it’s a full smile, Roger thinks wildly, submerged under a flash flood of astonishment, now visible only in faintest outline. 

“Hola, Numero Uno!” Rafael Nadal exclaims.“Did not know you were here too.”

Roger collapses back into his chaise, now that he sees he needn’t get up for the ball.Tries to sound bored when he’s mastered his own surprise sufficiently to reply.

“ ‘Course I’m here.Who isn’t?”

“But at the hotel, I mean.You stay—” Nadal indicates the low rise in front of him, behind Roger—“at Silver Sands too?”

“No.The Ritz.Just thought I’d sneak away for a bit, ‘cause too many cameras—they know I’m there, you know?” 

Roger puts a benevolent smile on his face; studies Nadal’s.Framed in long damp locks, it’s as flushed as a ripe peach.All that heat and sun, it had to be—for Nadal had been out in the Californian desert much longer than him.Had gone the distance and won the whole thing, actually, beating a certain Serb in the final in straights, so Roger had heard the other day.

“I think I am become crazy if I am you,” Nadal is saying—effortlessly managing, as only he could, to compliment Roger without sounding obsequious.

The young Spaniard’s scooped up the ball, which must mean he’ll be off soon.But all he’s doing now is edging closer, tiptoeing under the umbrella’s brim, so he no longer has to use his free hand as a vizor while talking to Roger.Which Roger doesn’t mind, not at all actually, for he’s still, recent setback notwithstanding, the best tennis player in the world, the best who’d ever lived (some are already saying).He’ll gladly make small talk with anyone who covets a few minutes’ royal favor.

Even this kid who’s unquestionably the biggest threat to his throne.This winsomely bashful, exquisitely personable, very good looking—

“Ra_faaa_!” 

Now Roger’s spotted them: the rest of the beach football gang.Restless, athletic figures, undeniably Andalucian, they’re yelling at Rafa as they prowl the powder in the distance to please cut out the chit chat and bring the ball back right the goddamn hell now, or his ass is grass.Or at least Roger thinks that’s what they’re shouting, because he’s got no Spanish whatsoever—none beyond “¡Hola!” and “por favor” and “gracias” and the numbers one through five. 

Rafa’s response to all this is to lob a Howitzer shell of a shout back toward the surf.To bounce and catch the ball several times too for good measure, glowering in defiance.Then to turn to Roger, a smile as shy and fresh and fragile as a snowdrop sprouting on his face, and to ask:

“You wanna come play?”

It tugs at Roger, this smile, with the slenderest fingertip delicacy.Which isn’t enough to pull him off his chaise, out of this state of pleasant drowsiness; so he starts rifling through excuses.If he can’t enjoy this smile from where he’s lying, he’ll settle for dreaming about it in the nap he’s about to drift into. 

I’m sore from practice this morning, he thinks.No: I’m expecting Mirka to join me any moment.No: I don’t play football, my feet are a disaster at managing a ball—

“Oh, but you play football before, I know.Play very well too.” 

Roger starts wide awake. 

How did he know? he stammers, before he can help himself. 

“Well—you are famous, no?” Nadal replies, addressing the arm of Roger’s chaise.“The whole world they know about you, about how you grow up.”

He’s sunburnt, Roger realizes as he examines Nadal’s cheeks, now an outrageous shade of magenta.

Or was it maybe the umbrella, upholstered in the livery of the Coca-Cola Company, making everything under its protective embrace look—

“Rafa hijo de pu_taaaaa_!” someone howls in the distance.

“Sure, I’ll come play,” Roger blurts out.“Just for a bit.”

A nap was probably a bad idea anyway; and the thriller he’d been trying the last hour to read, to the accompaniment of a virgin mojito long gone watery, was really hardly a thrill, it had turned out.

He draws near the surf with Nadal to find the whole bloody Armada’s invaded Key Biscayne.Literally so: for alongside Carlos Moyá and David Ferrer and Fernando Verdasco and Feliciano López and Juan Carlos Ferrero and Tommy Robredo there are at least five other Spaniards whose names and faces are largely a jumble to Roger.His kingly presence washes over them like a spell; transforms everyone’s steaming impatience, to his instant gratification, into moody reverence.

And Rafa too is looking damned pleased, damned proud—look at who _I’m_ friends with—till suddenly he’s attacked by Feli López, who homes in on him like a hawk and spirits him away from Roger’s side, hissing rapid-fire syllables into one ear, a strong brown arm draped over Rafa’s glistening neck. 

“Rogelio, I gonna put you with Los Rojos,” Moyá’s saying.“Rogelio?”

“Los Rojos” being everyone wearing red, the Armada’s admiral explains, after he’s secured Roger’s full and undivided attention.Plus anyone wearing anything that isn’t blue or black or purple or green or white, he adds sheepishly, because only two of them are actually wearing red.Roger’s wearing flamingo pink, which Moyá supposes is close enough to count as red. 

And Rafa, who is in persimmon orange, is still being harangued by the navy-wearing Feli, Roger sees when he looks round again for him.Staring at the sand, sunburn getting worse by the instant, while Feli whispers away and eyes Roger with malicious amusement—

“What’s going on?” Roger says finally, striding over in a huff.

“Nada,” mutters Rafa, shoving Feli away.

“Beg your pardon?" 

I've got the right to ask, Roger thinks as he watches Feli prance away, sniggering.Because Rafa’s his teammate now, and teammates are supposed stick up for each other, and Rafa’s also Roger’s junior by five years, which makes it even more imperative—

“Oh, Feli just say is good we are together,” Rafa mumbles.“I mean—”

He winds a fishing rod with one hand in a panic.

“Good we are on the same side, no?” 

Roger glowers at Rafa, who is now practically Team Red’s mascot, he’s so flushed. 

“Why?Because you’re so good you’d destroy me if we played against each other?” 

“No,” is the tremulous reply.“Is not that.” 

(Liar, fumes Roger.An Uncle Nadal had been a striker for Barcelona.Yes, Rafa had pledged his allegiance to the gods of tennis when a runt; but football was in his blood—)

“Maybe is because we play against each other always in tennis, you know?” Rafa’s stammering, now winding the fishing rod with the other hand.“Is good for once we play togeth—” 

He squeals.

“Is _definitely_ good you two play together,” chirps Ferru, who’s just trotted past and gifted Rafa a slap on the small of his back.“You two should _always_ be together.” 

“Cállate!” Rafa wails, as Ferru air-fives Feli and the two disintegrate into howls of laughter.

Now Roger, too, is belching steam out his ears. He’s capable, sure, of taking banter on the chin any time of day, every day; but this here’s a full-blown conspiracy, one they aren’t even bothering to mask behind a language barrier. 

And _he_’s its lone target, for freaking Rafa is _helping_ with the cover-up—

Enough, Rogi, his mother’s voice suddenly interjects.

Roger sucks in a deep breath; counts to ten. Concedes: Yes, I'm at it again. Nothing had so annoyed Mami, so reliably inspired reproach, as this inclination of his, to parse, suspect, surmise. He’d do well to learn to take people at face value, he'd been told countless times. 

“Even when you think they’re fooling you?”

“Even that, yes, as long as they don’t mean you harm.Because aren’t your favorite books and movies and fairytales fooling you too, after all?”

It had never made sense to him, this way of looking at things.But now he reaches for this lifesaver, clings to it resentfully but determinedly.Because he doesn’t want to blow his top in front of young Nadal: it would just not be a good look.

And he’s not about to start a war with the entire Spanish Armada, either. 

“I guess they _are_ right, it’s good we’re together,” he mutters.“ ‘Cause we’d be unstoppable if it was us two working together, right?”

He claps Rafa—gently—on the shoulder; quirks a brotherly smile.

“Maybe,” Rafa replies, peering bashfully at Roger.“We see.”

The corners of his mouth are crooking up, too.Relief, Roger thinks.

Or maybe, suggests a different corner of his brain, hope.

So see they do—and for all their bluster and cruelty, Feli and Ferru’s jokes turn out to possess an element of unintended truth.For if Rafa’s a genius lost to football, a could-have-been-Messi, Roger’s somehow on the same wavelength as he is, a natural at predicting and complementing his lightning assaults and feints.It’s only a matter of time before one sets up the other’s goal, and when it finally happens, it’s Roger with the assist, a lovely floating cross that flummoxes several of Los Azules’ defenders and arcs right off Rafa’s right foot through the goal that’s been marked with two plastic training cones.

“VAMOS!!” screams Rafa, careening across the sand like an albatross. 

He’s flying so fast, arms outstretched, that Roger expects him really to take off and soar.Which he does—straight at Roger, into Roger’s arms.Backwards Roger staggers, reeling from the impact of this human cannonball, eighty five kilos of pure muscle and momentum and ferocious joy.When finally his world-class footwork’s delivered him from embarrassment, brought him to a balanced standing halt, he’s finding his view of the sand, the other players, the exhaling surf and all the rest of Key Biscayne obscured by Rafa’s grin inches away from his nose, Rafa’s eyes dark with some unspoken spell. 

He stands very still, waiting for Rafa to dismount.But Rafa’s clinging to him like a koala to a eucalyptus tree, still breathing into his hair.So it’s up to Roger to set him down on the sand, which he tries to do as gently as possible, remembering to bend at the knees.

But either Rafa’s way too heavy, or his quads have checked right out after this pathetically short stint of footy,because he can only bend from the waist, and just like that, over he tips—Rafa hitting the sand tush-first, him following right on top of him. 

It happens curiously slowly, the fall.Slowly enough for Roger to witness Rafa’s face ignite with a smile of astonishment.To see that smile blossom with elation, mature into a blazing fire of joy. 

To watch it splinter into a kaleidoscope of dissonant emotions: passion and helpless yearning and diffidence and aching despair masked under a stoic courageous brightness.

He’s still picking out every shard from this shattered smile, trying to name every diaphanous hue, when, without warning, the strains of a song from the wrong year invade his head. 

> _ Nothing else ever seems to hurt like the smile on your face_
> 
> _when it’s only in my memory._

“Hey, Roger?” he hears; but he can’t speak, can’t breathe.

“Roger!”

The shout comes louder now, blasting away the sound of the surf. 

“_Earth to Roger Federer_!”

Back Roger crashes into the present, onto cold hard cobblestones under frigid alien sunshine.The ball’s sitting by his foot, and the whole street’s staring at him.

It’s another second before his limbs, lagging behind his eyes, come back online too.But at last he toes the ball back into play, contorting his face into an apologetic smile as he does so. 

“My bad, guys.Zoned out a little there.”

Like an old locomotive staggering out of a station, the match slowly winds back up, inching arthritically toward its former pace.But it’s missing one player—Novak, who’s making a beeline for Roger, who for his part has slinked away from the prayer wheel’s enchanted lair and found a tentative seat on a low stone bench nearby.

“Those critters are kicking my butt,” Novak moans, collapsing next to Roger and flinging an arm around him.“I need your help.”

Ruefully Roger surveys Novak as the latter gulps air, his long angular face a Niagara of sweat.

“Well, as a Swiss, my duty is to stay neutral—”

“Oh, come on!”

“Also, it would be very unfair.Two grown men—” Roger indicates the clamoring, swirling street with a sweep of his arm—“against a bunch of kids?”

“Oh, these kids are _good_,” says Novak.“Don’t forget also they live up here, whereas we just got here and are breathing very thin air.And as for us, I’m old and a diseased wreck, and you are …”

“Just plain old, yeah.”

There’s a pause.

“So you’re saying they could beat us even if we play together?” Roger asks.

“A good possibility, for sure.”Novak yanks up the woolen buff ringing his neck to wipe his face off.“Which I guess means it doesn’t matter in the end if you help me or not.”

His arm still hooked round Roger’s neck, he turns to look Roger full in the face.Who repays the favor, looking carefully into Novak’s rainbow hazel eyes, examining ceaselessly. It’s neutral to the naked eye, Novak’s stare—the same old blank slate inviting Roger’s projections. But the thin air must be addling Roger’s brain, because this time Roger can come up with no guesses whatsoever as to what it’s hiding.

It is just what he sees: a calm, placid, un-hostile expression.

An open, expectant expression.

“Well then,” he says finally, “just this once, Switzerland will gladly relinquish her neutrality to aid Serbia.”

He claps Novak on the shoulder.Gets a pat on his hand from Novak’s free hand for his collegiality, before both of them rise as one to plunge into the fray, Roger pausing briefly only to free himself of his day pack.

They lose—naturally.For not only is Roger no longer twenty-five, and somehow desperately bad at understanding the grammar of Novak’s football; Novak himself is, Roger suspects after the third time his teammate’s lost possession of the ball, deliberately exaggerating his own inadequacy, flubbing his dribbling at suspiciously critical moments, kicking passes so wide Roger would slip a disk or strain a hamstring were he actually to try to retrieve them.The Swiss-Serbian coalition are five goals down when Novak, finally aware of Vanja’s frantic hand signaling from the sidelines (“We really do need to start walking,” Bibek’s muttering, wringing his hands), declares time on the match, laughing his guts out at the lopsided scoreline and the last error of his that’s helped create it. 

Yet it’s immediately clear—to Bibek’s still mounting exasperation—that they’ll continue to be held up some time yet.For now the children—they must have drawn every child in Lukla—are all crowding round Novak, and Novak’s high-fiving everyone through a forest of arms, hugging back the ones forward enough to embrace him, lilting brightly with the rest in English with all five words of Nepalese he knows indiscriminately sprinkled in. 

“Children do like him,” Anto—Vanja’s Foundation colleague—is saying to Bibek, an apology and boast in one.“He’s got a big personality.”

Or maybe, Roger thinks, as he’s still trying to catch his breath, doubled over with his hands on his knees, they’re just more easily persuaded.More easily fooled.

For nothing else was consistent, could align, with Roger’s understanding of the baffling mid-career transformation Novak Djokovic the man had undergone.Young Clownface had been a pestilence; but at least he’d been as forthright in his awful boorishness as he was consistent in the stratospheric excellence of his tennis, a known quantity.

Then one year, seemingly overnight to Roger’s enraged confusion, everything—_everything_, really—about him had changed.The Goon Squad parents and their mawkish T-shirts: banished from his box.His replies to provocative questions and mean-spirited jokes: now examples of staggering tact, training tapes for future diplomats.The barbaric victory displays, the shirt-ripping and chest-pounding: even those were gone too, replaced with a twee routine, intended to melt hearts, that invited ridicule but at least could not inspire repugnance. [[14]](https://deadspin.com/enough-with-the-boob-throwing-celebration-djokovic-1795689339)

It had made little sense till Roger stumbled upon a theory—an accusation—offered up by one Nick Kyrgios. 

_He has a sick obsession with wanting to be liked._

_He wants to be liked so much, I can’t stand it. _[15]

That was it, Roger had thought when he’d heard.Nick, no paragon of virtue himself, had hit it on the head.No one, except a true sociopath, could have endured for long the global contempt Novak had brought upon himself for being—well—himself.And so it had to be that Novak, in search of the love that had been showered upon Roger and Rafa but that had forever eluded him, had just molted, changed his colors but not his soul.

For no way could he truly mean it when he engaged in another one of his displays of exasperating decency—sportingly applauding points near the climax of a tight championship match [[16]](https://youtu.be/TUikJi0Qhhw?t=17246); imitating Rafa’s inimitable grace in his winners’ speeches.

These were just little fictions;acts calculated to poach unearned respect, to purchase uninformed affection.

Twists of a knife, too, that he stuck in those who still remembered what he’d been like. Who yearned to see him fail, founder, fade—and never saw their desire fulfilled.

“Hey, Roger!” Roger suddenly hears Novak yelling.“Get your butt over here now!”

He’s waving from the center of this maelstrom of youth, phone in hand.Selfie time.

I can’t stand it, Nick’s still saying in his ear, as Roger straightens up and contemplates whether to obey.Preach: Roger, God knew, had cringed as much as anyone had at Novak’s little moments of staged sainthood.Many had been the times when he, comforted only by his own popularity—by the certainty everyone considered him the superior human being if not any longer the superior tennis player—had fervently wished Novak wouldn’t bother trying to close _that_ gap between them.Thuggery was bad; fakery was worse—

His mother's voice silences him all of a sudden.

Enough, Rogi.

He shudders. Then snaps his shoulders on purpose, to shrug off the fright of this disembodied admonition. Yes, Mami: I wish I could live up to everything you wanted—still want me to be. Because it _is_ exhausting, all this squinting through the smoke, looking always for the opposite of what I see and hear, searching for the thug behind the champion and gentleman. 

But you said it was fine to do only if someone meant no harm.And this man has harmed me more than any other—

“I’m gonna give you a time violation if you’re not here by ten!” Novak’s shouting.“One—two—”

But is he harming you now? another voice—one from within Roger—is asking him, or rather himself.

Would he ever harm you again like he already has? 

“—three—four—”

And that’s when it dawns upon Roger, just as he’s working up the rest of his rejoinder to his own devil’s advocate. Yes, he’d suffered mightily at Novak’s hands; lost matches, titles, pieces of his own self-esteem. 

Even—if he can bear to think about things this way—his lonely perch atop the pinnacle of tennis history. 

But those days—the days they’d wished each other ill, even as they’d spoken praise and lamented each others’ setbacks and injuries, because their ranking points and livelihoods and legacies had depended upon it: they were over.

They’d never contest a title ever again. 

Would probably never stand on the same court again—except, barring any unexpected exigencies, in a few days’ time, when they might hazard hitting a few rallies against a backdrop of snow and seracs, not to prove once and for all which of them was the greater, but just for the record books.

Just for fun.

“—seven—eight—” 

“Calm your tits, man,” Roger shouts back.“I’ll be there in a sec.”

He could afford to take his mother’s advice now. And he will, he resolves, as he jogs forth and is received in an ecstatic embrace by Lukla’s youth.

Because this Novak _is_ better than the reality he'd clung to in orderto diminish his own failures—that's instead only curdled him like milk. 

He's actually fine—quite fine indeed—with suspending disbelief and embracing this fiction for now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **(1)** The 2011 season really was the turning point of Novak and Roger’s rivalry. Before 2011 their head-to-head was 12-7 (4-2 in Grand Slam matches) in favor of Roger; since 2011 (and as of this update), Roger has been 9-20 against Novak (2-9 in Grand Slam matches), including a 0-3 record in Wimbledon finals (2014, 2015, and 2019).
> 
> **(2)** My flight to Lukla really was a terrifying, turbulent experience. Was never a nervous flyer before, then became a nervous wreck on airplanes for the next eighteen months.
> 
> **(3)** “I like this day. I like how sunny and cold it is at the same time” etc: a riff on a line uttered by Mr Rochester (“I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost”), which happens to be one of my favorite lines of dialogue (or lines of any kind, come to think of it) from _Jane Eyre_.
> 
> **(4)** An interesting set of facts about Indian Wells and Miami ’07 (the latter then held at Key Biscayne):  
— Roger was defending champion at both tournaments, and lost at both in early rounds to the same player, Guillermo Cañas of Argentina.  
— With his back-to-back victories over Roger, Cañas became (at the time) the only player other than Rafael Nadal to defeat Roger in consecutive matches since 2003. Even more remarkably, Cañas had entered Indian Wells as a lucky loser and Miami as a qualifier; at the latter he even made it all the way to the final, where he lost to a certain Serb.  
— Novak broke into the ATP top 10 for the first time in his career by reaching the final at Indian Wells, where he lost to Rafa, 2-6, 5-7. Miami, which he would go on to win, was his first Masters 1000 title. 
> 
> **(5)** Nothing else ever seems to hurt …: Beyoncé, Lemonade (2016), “Pray You Catch Me.”
> 
> **(6)** And finally, because I can’t stop adding video links: 
> 
> — A cute commercial featuring Roger with a football and Roger staring at mountains (regrettably not in the same shot):
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b59vrjokZMM
> 
> — An equally cute video of Novak being a great sport with a ball kid at an exhibition match. Them kids do love him!: 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlWzQXu3FSs
> 
> **NEXT UP**: On the grueling slog up to the famed Sherpa enclave of Namche Bazaar, Roger and Novak each discover that the other has a debilitating phobia.


	3. Namche Bazaar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roger and Novak each discover that the other has a debilitating phobia. Novak explains his theory of how fate and cosmic justice work; Roger relives a different Wimbledon final and its aftermath on the grueling slog up to the famous Sherpa village of Namche Bazaar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good grief, another slow-as-molasses update. Just in time though, for the first rematch my boys will be playing since their encounter on Centre Court! Thursday evening (November 14th) at the O2 arena in London; the winner will advance to the knockout stage of the World Tour Finals. Roger will be looking for revenge, of course, while Novak will be looking to give Rafa a run for his money for the Year End #1 ranking. And leading up to that, we had titles in Tokyo and Paris-Bercy for Novak and a tenth (tenth!!) title for Roger in Basel. What a year both (all three of them) have been having.
> 
> I expected this chapter to be a midget in comparison to Chapter Two, and easier to write. Wrong on both accounts; hence the unbelievably slow update. I don't know why on earth they're turning out so, so long ...
> 
> Anyway, here you go!
> 
> **EDIT (14 November '19):** Revenge for Roger! Oh boy did he get revenge. Straight sets over Novak, 6-4, 6-3, the first time he's won against the Serb in four years, AND by doing so he not only kicks Novak out of the ATP finals but also ensures Novak loses his Year-End #1 ranking to Rafa. Before this match pretty much everyone in the tennis community had their money on Novak. But Roger's never done till he says so!
> 
> But--BUT--poor Novak was clearly injured and ill, clutching and massaging his elbow (the one he had surgery on two years ago), putting eye drops in his eyes on changeovers. It was heartbreaking to see this AND to hear the crowd in London cheer all his double faults like lunatics. C'mon Roger fans, take a lesson from your man, learn some class! No opponent deserves this sort of treatment, let alone someone who's won sixteen (SIXTEEN) fucking Grand Slams. And please please Novak get better soon!!

_If someone gains success without great toil,_

_he would be a sage amongst numberless fools—someone who_

_has fortified his path through life with ingenious planning._

_But such things do not rest with men.Providence grants victory,_

_exalting now one man, throwing another beneath her hands._

_Compete in due measure.At Megara you hold the title_

_and in the plain of Marathon too; and with three victories_

_you mastered Hera’s local contest, O Aristomenes, through your striving._

_And upon four bodies you fell from above with hostile intent—_

_four, for whom no homecoming as happy as yours_

_was decided at the Pythian festival._

_Sweet laughter did not arouse joy all around_

_when they returned to their mothers; but rather, shirking their rivals,_

_they slink down alleyways, gnawed by failure._

_But he to whom Fate’s lottery has granted a new success_

_is fueled by hope in his hour of glory_

_and takes flight on the wings of virile feats,_

_aspiring to more than wealth.In the blink of an eye the delight_

_of mortals burgeons; but just as swiftly does it crumble to ground_

_when shaken by a hostile will._

_Creatures of a day!What is man?What is man not?_

_A dream of a shadow is man.But whenever God-given splendor befalls a mortal,_

_he basks in Glory’s glow, and a blessed life is his._

— Pindar, Eighth Pythian Ode, vv. 74-97 [[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pindar)

Composed to honor the occasion of Aristomenes of Aegina’s victory

in the wrestling contest at the Pythian Games, 446 BCE.

From the high green archway that marks the terminus of Lukla village, the trail to Everest Base Camp winds down, down, down—down, Bibek explains, till it marries the Dudh Khosi river at the hamlet of Jorsalle, a short distance inside Sagarmatha Park’s borders.From there it then rises again, up and up and up, gaining the threshold of Namche Bazaar, the famed Sherpa village, several hundred meters above the Dudh Khosi riverbed.It is a wide trail—wide enough almost for a car—and well-paved, turning even, in steeper sections, into a stairway.A road, practically, Roger thinks, reminiscing back to the whispery tracks he’s traced through grass and scree on yearly summer journeys through the Alps.

Namche being tomorrow’s destination, it is all downhill today on this comfortable road.A fact which fills Roger with relief; for the football’s made his already heavy legs even heavier, and his shoulders are aching.He’s sleepy, too, for it’s warm now, and the valley airless and dusty and fragrant with the calming odor of pines.All that’s keeping him actually from drifting off, and sleepwalking the rest of this gentle journey to Phakding, is the knowledge that an accidental tumble down these stone steps would end all hope of a triumphant return to the courts—no questions asked.

That, and all the noise.For a place that’s far from civilization, where not a single car exists (for there are no paved roads, he’s learned from Bibek), the Dudh Khosi river valley is startlingly loud.The trail itself is an artery of sound—bell-bedecked mule convoys jangling past like carillons; porters burdened with fantastical loads, belting arias that remind Roger of the music he and Novak heard their first evening in Kathmandu. 

And once every ten minutes—at the very least—there’s also a helicopter hurtling overhead, stifling the roar of the river below as it chases the valley’s crease.

“Scenic flights, mostly,” says Bibek.“And sometimes the lodge owners here, the ones who can afford it, they fly.Cuts out several days’ walk if they have business in Lukla or Kathmandu.” 

“And rescue flights,” Mohit adds—startling Roger, for its the first time he’s heard Mohit speak.

Rescue flights?

“For people who get sick.Not just on mountain.On the trail.Many get sick, even before Base Camp.”

Which wouldn’t bother Roger so much at all—the helicopters, that is, not this casual revelation about the dangers of altitude—were it not for Novak’s highly peculiar, maddeningly consistent reaction to them.Every time one’s flown past, he’s stopped walking and stared—gaped, as if bewitched, at this most mundane of modern sights.And Novak, it so happens, is also the person who’s walking right in front of Roger most of the time.

“What’s the deal with you and helicopters, man?” Roger asks, the third time Novak halts and he’s forced to sidestep swiftly to avoid stumbling into him.

“Sorry,” Novak mumbles, avoiding Roger’s gaze.

He doesn’t stop again after that, but still, Roger notices, looks up reflexively every time—obsessively tracking each passing blip, head swiveling like a weathervane, till it’s vanished from sight and its peppery thrum has thinned out to a subauditory haze.

At lunch, which they finally stop for around mid-afternoon, Novak brings up the subject of Roger’s grievance without warning. 

“It’s a habit I haven’t been able to shake, stopping to stare at planes flying overhead.I’m sorry it bothers you.”

“Not at all,” Roger mutters, suddenly embarrassed.

They’re sitting at a table by themselves—the result of everyone else’s deference; for theirs is certainly the nicest one at this trailside restaurant, the only fully shaded spot on the viewing edge of the establishment’s expansive terrace.Just beyond the low stone wall right next to their chairs, the whole of the valley can be seen yawning like an evergreen cavern—the next ten minutes of trail etched along one side; the Dudh Khosi a ribbon of slate at the very bottom.

“Does it—I mean—does it bother _you_?” Roger asks, after a few more mouthfuls eaten in awkward silence.“This habit of yours?”

He’s well acquainted, as all tennis players are, with bizarre compulsions; had been thinking, while stuffing his face with all this delicious food—stir-fried noodles; egg fried rice—of Rafa’s drink bottles and pre-serve rituals. [[2]](https://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/06/rafael-nadal-ritual-tic-pick-water-bottles)But it makes no sense, he’s realized, for Novak’s tic to be in the same category. 

Heaving a sigh, Novak plants his fork into the mound of potatoes and vegetables on his plate—which is all he’s chosen from the buffet, and which has gone down much more slowly than Roger’s pile of food. 

“It’s not so much _it_ as everything behind it that bothers me.I guess things stick to you more stubbornly if you’re young when they happen.It’s true of war, as of one’s tennis training.”

Roger’s silent, which Novak takes as an invitation to continue.

“I was twelve years old, I remember clearly.”Or more precisely, he’d just turned twelve, Novak explains: for he’d been at the juniors’ tennis club he frequented every day after school in Belgrade, celebrating his birthday with his fellow young tennis nuts, when a sharp whine overhead had drowned out the birthday song they’d been singing in his honor. 

It was a single plane—a NATO bomber—tracing a line across the sky, scattering what looked like shards of silver into the bright afternoon air.

Calmly delivering death from above, right over their heads. [[3]](https://youtu.be/5fioh5PMyTk?t=921)

“They already had been going on for—for at least two months at that point, I think.But they’d mostly been at night, you know—you saw and heard and felt the explosions, but never the bombs falling.It was … different to see it all in broad daylight.”

Novak pauses to take a sip of hot lemon tea; clears his throat.

“And it went on for weeks more.Not a very long time in the grand scheme of things, but back then it felt like an eternity.I still get nervous today when planes fly overhead, even though obviously there’s no reason to be.Still am afraid of loud noises, too.”

A string of notes, silvery and ghostly, wafts toward them on the breeze.Looking over the low stone wall, Roger finds the mule convoy—ant-sized, crossing a toy bridge in the indeterminate distance—and keeps his gaze fixed there.

“How,” he asks, once he’s regained his voice, “did you not go crazy at Wimbledon?”

It’s a game all of them can play: naming every tournament’s signature auditory nuisance.At the U.S. Open it’s most definitely the squeal of train breaks; the Australian, the cackle of seagulls; Cincinatti, ill-timed fireworks.Though Roger’s never bothered to take a poll, he’s sure it’s planes flying overhead everyone would say is the All-England Club’s particular bane.SW19 had to be right under an approach corridor to one of London’s major airports—probably Heathrow itself; for not fifteen minutes of match time on Centre Court could ever seem to pass without the roar of a low-flying jet rolling over the green like a thundercloud.

“Well, it was different when I was playing tennis,” Novak concedes.“Tennis was the only thing that could distract me from that sort of noise.From all the white noise of life.”

And had it not been that way—had tennis been just a career, or even a passion, not a ray of light in a dark place, a narrow path to salvation—he’d never have made it, let alone become himself, he goes on.He’d have washed out before his career could even begin: would have broken under the burden of knowing, while struggling through day after grueling day at the German tennis academy he’d been packed off to, that on his prospects rode not only his own chances of ever escaping the wasteland that was postwar Serbia, but also his entire family’s financial solvency, which had been gambled without second thought on his tuition.

“And maybe that’s why—I don’t know—maybe it’s why the kids below us were unable for so long to step up to it,” he’s saying.“I mean—are they talented?Yes, plenty.Are they ambitious and hard working?Of course.But it’s not talent and training and ambition alone that make a great player—a _truly_ great player I mean, like a Sampras or Agassi or—” he makes a sweeping motion with one arm, as if inviting Roger to come this way please—“a Federer.One must have … what’s the word?” 

A pause. 

“Determination.No, not that.Something else.More than that.”

He scrunches his eyes shut as he scours his mental thesaurus.

“_Conviction_,” he says finally, snapping his eyes open.“The belief that you were chosen by God to play the sport, born to make history in it.And the ability to keep on believing that, no matter how many disappointments come your way.To believe it until you _will_ it to happen.”

A quality which Rafa had in spades, Roger thinks, as he mulls this unexpected disquisition over in his mind.He’d stumbled once across a photo of child Rafa—ten years old maybe, seated during a changeover, a crap racquet with mangled strings (no doubt forced upon him by Uncle Toni to teach the lesson that technique was everything, _everything_) leaning against his chair.The hairs on the back of Roger’s neck had stood up at the sight of this mop-haired, knock-kneed boy, the history-maker in making.

Had tingled with terrified awe, at the intensity of the boy’s brooding gaze—the sense of purpose, already manifest and iron-clad; the will to win, already smoldering like a wildfire. [[4]](https://www.reddit.com/r/tennis/comments/d4yt44/rafa_nadal_photo_of_the_day_rafa_during_a_junior/)

And himself?Love for the sport, passion, had certainly always been there for Roger—had driven and guided and anchored him in this unforgiving world from the very beginning.But sterner feelings, he’s quite sure, had never been part of the equation of his success.It had just been pure good fun for years—winning everything in sight, eviscerating the competition, till Rafa had come along and saved it all from becoming too easy, too boring.

Which made him the exception, then: the Da Vinci to Rafa’s Michelangelo or Novak’s Van Gogh. 

The genius who hadn’t needed to wrestle with his own demon-ridden soul in his quest for greatness. 

“I dunno, man,” he says aloud to Novak.“You had it, for sure, but—”

The rest of his sentence dies in his mouth.

For he’s suddenly remembered something.Actually, someone.

Peter.

Who’d been with Roger when, for all his ferocious, incandescent talent, he’d looked like another also-ran in the making.

Who’d abruptly left and had, by upending Roger’s life, breaking his heart, awakened in Roger that something he’d needed to unlock his greatness, and that he’d always lacked.

“Roger?” says Novak, brows furrowing in consternation.

Roger frees himself of this riptide of reminiscence with a shudder.Shakes his head vigorously. 

Takes a large gulp of his own tea, because he can feel his throat catching, and banishes this entire train of thought from his mind, his skin tingling under Novak’s searchlight gaze.

It’s overcast, and late in the afternoon, when they finally reach their lodge at Phakding.Set a stone’s throw from the ravine containing the Dudh Khosi, it reminds Roger, with its steepled roof and gingerbread house facade, of many a ski chalet visited back home.And in the Alps in wintertime they might as well be, for with the sun’s disappearance half an hour ago, a coldness, wet and bone-chilling, has descended upon the whole valley.Thankfully hot tea, thermos upon thermos of it, is waiting for them in the lodge’s cozy, pine-paneled common room when they arrive, alongside baskets of freshly popped popcorn. 

Roger’s nearly emptied his mug, and is close to feeling his toes and fingertips again, when Bibek comes over and hands Novak, seated diagonally across from him at their long mess hall-style table (for the common room’s also the lodge’s dining room), a room key. 

His own key still hasn’t come by the time he’s downed his refill and had his fourth fistful of popcorn, so he staggers to his feet, intending to find Bibek.

“You want to wash up first?” Novak asks him, holding out the key.

Roger stares.Thinks: I’ve got to be more tired than I realize.But he hadn’t misheard, he learns, when Vanja appears at his side several awkward seconds later, wearing an expression of pure, excruciating contrition.

“This lodge—all the lodges along the trail, in fact—they have only double rooms, Mr Federer.We did call ahead to ask if they would let them as singles, but they said they couldn’t, not during the main trekking season, because of the number of guests they would be expecting.”

He’s wringing his hands as he talks on; but if anyone’s even more anxious than him, it’s Novak, who’s got his mouth sealed shut in a long thin line as he eyes Roger.

Roger’s still speechless even after Novak’s waved Vanja away; so it’s Novak who finally breaks the silence. 

“If you would like to room with someone else,” he says slowly, carefully, “I can be with Anto and you with Vanja.Or vice versa if you prefer it the other way around.”

Roger gropes for an appropriate response; finds his mind isn’t delivering.It’s gone completely offline, snuffed out, like a phone plunged into water.

“I think I can survive having you as a roommate,” he replies at last, “as long as you can survive me.”

It’s not a lie, what he’s managed to say.He really is so exhausted—the runway at Tribhuvan and midair terrors had belonged to a previous lifetime, were distant dreams more than memories now—that he’d submit to anything that doesn’t involve putting his day pack back on and hitting the trail again. 

Including, even, being roommates with Novak. 

“We’ll see who breaks first then, huh?” Novak says, his sallow face lighting up with a toothy grin.

“We’ll see,” Roger mutters, holding his hand out for the key.

In the few hours of free time separating tea and dinner, Roger somehow scrapes up the strength to take a bath—a sponge bath, that is, for there are no showers—and not to collapse in a swoon on his threadbare twin bed rightafterwards, so as to allow Novak his turn in their room to freshen up.The common room’s a recipe for social embarrassment—he’s sure he’ll conk out in the middle of any conversation he might strike up, that is if he’s even able to string enough words together to have one—so he drags himself outside, hoping to be reinvigorated by the fierce cold.The village of Phakding is just a row of buildings along both sides of the now deserted trail: other lodges, stores and restaurants, houses bordered by vegetable plots and livestock pens. 

They’d passed quite a few such settlements on the way here, all of which had looked rustic and picturesque while bathed under full sunshine.

Now everything looks bleak.

The remainder of the day crawls by slower than molasses.Somehow Roger stays awake through the team’s obligatory daily gathering, held before not after dinner today, at which they learn that tomorrow’s a big day, the day they’ll be making the long hard slog up to Namche Bazaar.Then Bibek produces a strange contraption: a plastic clip, the size of a whistle, which he has everyone take turns putting on their index fingers.

“We will be doing this every evening,” he says, as the probe makes the rounds, beeping then flashing numbers, which he scribbles down in a notebook: heart rate, oxygen levels. 

“Why is mine so low?” asks Novak, when the probe announces his blood oxygen level: 91 out of 100.

“It’s not a contest, you know,” drawls Roger, who’s gotten a 98.

“Everyone’s different,” says Bibek, throwing Roger, then Novak—who’s rolling his eyes hard—an amused glance.“Maybe you acclimatize more slowly.We will keep an eye on you.”

Half an hour after this ritual concludes—half an hour Roger spends fading in and out of awareness on the banquette he’s sharing with Oliver and the other camera guys, wondering during his few lucid moments how on earth Novak the cancer survivor can possibly have so much more energy than him, energy enough still to converse and joke and charm everyone crowded round the large stove where he’s sitting—dinner is finally served.Among the offerings—heaps and heaps of dal bhat, rice, potatoes, papadoms, noodles, fried eggs, vegetables—there’s a chicken curry, which Roger spends a moment contemplating longingly.

“I think it should be OK, actually,” Novak says, sidling up to him.“We’re not inside the park yet, you know.”

Roger decides against it anyway, then moves to sit with Vanja and Anto, not because he’s particularly keen to learn about all the various other charitable initiatives the Djokovic Foundation’s been spearheading lately, but because it’s the place at their table furthest away from where Novak’s sitting.

They almost make it through the rest of the evening without exchanging another word.And they would have, in fact, if Roger, already ensconced comfortably in his sleeping bag, hadn’t glanced away from his phone to see Novak wriggling into his fully dressed, wearing a ski hat and scarf to boot.

Was he really going to go to sleep wearing all of_ that_?

“I’m freezing, Roger,” is Novak’s peeved response.“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the only heat source in this entire building is that stove back out there.”

He throws Roger a look as sour as vinegar.

“Seriously, why—”

Bring it on, Roger thinks, quirking a defiant eyebrow.

But all Novak does next is clamp his mouth shut and purse it—purse it so hard, the profile of his face goes crescent-shaped.

“Good night, Roger,” he huffs eventually, burrowing in till only his ski hat is showing. 

Roger doesn’t repay the favor—doesn’t even so much as grunt in acknowledgement.But it _is_ cold in here, he concedes, eyeing the film of mist his breath is leaving on his phone’s screen protector.

And—hellfire and damnation—the only switch for the room light, which is still on, is nowhere near the nightstand separating their cots, he realizes when he finally puts his phone away, but all the way across the fucking room, just to the right of the door.

“Hey man,” he croaks.“Could you get the lights?Since you’re still wearing all your clothes?”

But Novak’s already out cold—is already _snoring_—so Roger shimmies out of his bag, swearing, and makes a mental note to turn everything off before climbing into bed tomorrow night, to hell with whether Novak’s still up or not.

He comes to in darkness.Darkness so black, that even after he’s opened his eyes, he still feels they’re closed.

Somewhere beyond the wall next to his cot, the river is sighing.And from somewhere much closer, he can hear a series of strange tapping noises.

Tic tic tap.

A phone keyboard, he realizes, when he shifts around and sees that it’s not pitch black after all—that there’s a rectangle of light, an electronic will o’ the wisp, hovering uncertainly across the room from him.

He’s maneuvering onto his other side, trying to return to his cocoon of perfect darkness, when the sounds stop.

“Roger?” comes the whisper.

“Mmph.” 

“Sorry.”

“S’okay.”

There’s a click: the sound of a mute button being engaged—a spate of rustling—then just the river again.When Roger next glances around, because he’s now thinking in complete sentences and therefore has no chance of going back to sleep anytime soon, it’s no longer the patch of light he sees, but Novak’s face, outlined in ghostly blue.

“What time is it?”

“Three forty-seven,” Novak hisses. “Go back to sleep.”

“Who on earth is texting you at three forty-seven?”

“It’s not yet midnight in western Europe.And I could say it’s none of your business.”

Jelena, then, Roger thinks.Assumes.

“But if you insist,” Novak adds, after a pregnant pause, “it’s our mutual friend, a certain Spanish capybara.”

_Who_?

“Rafael Nadal, you dummy,” is the answer.“Did you never see those Internet memes where they pretended Rafa was a capybara?” [[5]](https://blazepress.com/2014/07/15-capybaras-look-like-rafael-nadal/)

No, is what Roger’s supposed to say, because he’s woefully out of date on the latest hijinks they’ve been cooking up on Tumbler and Reddit, and doesn’t even know what a stupid “kapibara” is.But he can’t say No.

Can’t say anything, because someone’s just plunged a dagger through his solar plexus, and is cranking it so hard his throat’s hitching and his eyes are watering in unspeakable agony.

“Oh,” is all he finally whispers.“OK.”

Say something, you idiot.Anything. 

Tell him I say hi.

But his tongue’s become a block of cement, and by the time he’s managed to prize it from the floor of his mouth, the room’s been plunged fully back into darkness, and Novak’s snores have started up again.

Leaving him to wonder, as he lies there looking at nothing, seeing nothing, what the hell had happened the last time they—he and Rafa—had seen each other, that made it impossible for him to bear even the thought of speaking or reaching out to Rafa ever again.

The answer, Roger admits after an eternity of agonizing, is nothing.Because by then, it had all already transpired between them—everything that had brought them to where they were now, and would probably remain, absent divine intervention, till the end of days.

All that _had_ actually happened last October at the Rafael Nadal Academy at Manacor—all that there’d been left to happen—was the smokescreen act, the bid to convince the world all the tabloid whispers of their falling out were, precisely, tabloid whispers.Which Roger had pulled off with admirable competence, giving a fulsome speech which had launched a thousand Internet accolades and would have earned him a place in the Sportsmanship Hall of Fame, if the planet hadn’t already elected him there two decades ago.I give you, WTA ladies and ATP gentlemen, the proud holder of twenty-two Grand Slam titles, twenty-fucking-two majors to my twenty, fifteen of them won at Roland Garros.I simply cannot imagine what the sport will be like now that he finally, regrettably has chosen to retire.Nor can I imagine what it would have been like had he never picked up a racquet.

(Actually, _that_ I can imagine.

Tennis still would have been tennis. 

And its greatest player ever would have been _me_, thank you very much indeed.)

Only the right bits, of course, had come out of Roger on the podium.The bad bits, he’d bottled up somehow, like a battery bottles its acid.Everyone had cheered and clapped and sobbed; no one had been the wiser.

No one except Rafa, who’d come on stage at the conclusion, and—following a stiff handshake and a half second’s hesitation—had gone for a half-embrace, the sort given to a sworn enemy at the net after an excruciating five-setter loss. 

It hadn’t been either gesture that had really gotten to Roger, though.The _smile_ was what had frozen his blood, set off a typhoon in his grimacing stomach.That well-loved mouth, so habitually warm and expressive, had been a rictus of formality that evening—pulled ear to ear, baring every gleaming tooth like a Great White’s snout.

And the eyes—

The eyes.

Screaming pain and anger.Accusing Roger, as he’d stood up there sweating under the lights before the gaping stare of cameras, of unspeakable wrongs.

They’re still accusing Roger now, as he lies shivering in the dark listening to Novak’s snores.So as soon as it’s light—and a cold and wet and gray light it is, like the light at the bottom of a lake—Roger gets up, sorely regretting not having done as Novak has, gotten into bed fully dressed, because it _is_ absolutely fucking freezing. 

He throws on his clothes and washes his face in ice cold water in the sink down the hall.And when that’s not enough, he plunges outside, bootlaces only half done up, hoping this time to be numbed rather than sharpened by the appalling cold.

Breakfast is in full swing when Roger returns from his heated circumnavigation of Phakding.Like a deplaning traveler walking into hot weather, he reels in the doorway, briefly stunned by the noise and commotion in the common room.Either the lodge’s population has tripled overnight, or he’d been too tired last night to register anything beyond his bubble of personal space.

His team’s crammed together at the same table they’d eaten dinner at last night, as if they’d never left.But Novak isn’t among them.

Novak is, Roger discovers after another look about, sitting by himself on the other side of the room, at one end of a half-full table. 

He heads there—drawing a look of wary surprise from his roommate as he slides into the seat opposite.

“And how did you sleep?” Roger expects—braces himself to hear, after the server’s come by and taken his order of coffee (black), eggs (poached), and pancakes with honey and butter.Every bloody morning this trip so far, he’s gotten the question from Novak.He has no idea whether it’s a Serbian thing, or just Novak who thinks asking it is the polite thing to do, like holding doors open for others or sneezing into one’s sleeve. 

But this morning it never comes, for Novak’s already returned his attention to the bowl of oatmeal in front of him, and is now adding half a banana to the pile of raisins and walnut halves and shredded coconut on top.

He’s in one of his moods, Roger realizes, as he watches Novak sullenly work his knife, taking care to slice every wafer of fruit flesh prosciutto-thin.They’d been infamous on tour, said to be as varied and fickle as the weather in England.Said, that was, till Roger had invited Novak to join Team Europe at Chicago in 2018, and gotten a lifetime’s fill of first-hand experiences.Small wonder Mirka had been stunned he’d decided to go on this trip—and had been so unsympathetic to all his long-distance complaints. 

Not that he’d lodged all that many so far, in his defense.He hadn’t needed to, with Novak being surprisingly even-keeled these first few days—crafty and annoying, yes, but hardly ever churlish or hostile.

He ought to have known this run of good weather would not last forever.

For some time he just sits there, watching Novak—banana operation complete—stir, stir, stir his revolting breakfast without eating it.

Wondering how risky it would be to try to fly through this menacing raincloud, till curiosity and vexation finally overcome his apprehension, and he blurts out the question he’d been bursting to ask since ten of four in the morning.

“So how’s Rafa doing?”

Novak’s eyes snap up.

How come _you_ don’t know the answer? they say.

But all that comes out of Novak’s mouth, when he does open it, is a straightforward answer, delivered with Radio BBC impassivity.About as fine as just-retired global superstar could be expected to be doing, Rafa Nadal.Busy with his academy.Still showing his face here and there, at charity events and matches, but mostly staying below the radar.

“He texted me because he’s been following our posts, was wondering how everything was going for us.”Novak pulls out his phone, frowns at it, then lays it face down on the table.“Hasn’t replied yet to my reply, though.”

“Could it be the time difference?” asks Roger.“How far behind us is Spain?”

And there goes my first double fault of the day, he thinks, as he leans aside to permit delivery of his breakfast and stomachs another look of baffled incredulity from Novak.Of course he already knows the answer to this stupidest of questions: Spain and Switzerland are in the same time zone.

“He’s been bad at responding to texts ever since he retired,” Novak replies. “Not that I can blame him.I often wish I could ignore the world, too.”

In the silence that follows, Roger—smarting from this not-so-subtle jab—escapes, while digging into his eggs and pancakes, into thinking of all the times he’d seen Rafa use his phone right after winning a final, while waiting for the trophy ceremony.

Wondering whom he’d been texting, whose texts he’d been reading, as he’d sat there on his chair glowing with sweat and elation. 

Because he, Roger, had always observed a decorous interval when congratulating Rafa—twenty-four hours at minimum; several days if the victory was a Slam that ought to have been his.He hadn’t wanted to be seen—more so even in later than in earlier years—as following too closely. 

To divulge the fact that he’d watched these matches; or, whenever he couldn’t watch, had followed the live score updates on Google, surreptitiously peering down the inside of his jacket or under the restaurant tablecloth while giving one ear and a distracted smile to the foundation exec, the corporate rep, the fashion designer.

“He was quite disappointed you couldn’t be there, actually,” he says—blurts out, again.

(Christ.What on earth was the matter with him—with his mouth, and the filter between it and his brain—this morning?)

Novak’s response is to stare wordlessly.And a most curious stare is his: not one of surprise this time, even though his eyes are large—large enough for Roger to make out strands of blue and gold amid their forested depths. 

It’s a searching stare instead: him trawling the recesses of Roger’s mind, like a battleship hunting a submarine in the ocean’s vast darkness.

Feeling out the answer to the question anyone else would ask aloud: what Roger had meant by “there.”

“Oh, yeah?”

And that, precisely, is one reason why young Roger had never liked young Novak—and why old Roger still feels about as comfortable in old Novak’s presence as a snail crossing a pincushion.Novak, he’d always suspected, could read minds—could divine where you’d serve next from your posture; could tell whether your bravado and Come ons were exhilarated confidence or just adrenaline and good acting masking terror.And from just the last few days of cheek-by-jowl living, Roger’s also learned it isn’t just your game Novak could—can—read.He’s a human tuning fork, is how Roger would put it if he had a gift for metaphor.Constantly taking the feel of your jumbled thoughts and emotions—channeling the whole mess in passive silence—distilling it into one pure tone of emotional or cognitive truth—then, finally, giving voice to the signal obscured by the white noise of your confusion and denial and equivocation.

But there are still some things he must put into words for Novak, Roger realizes when he sees the reaction on Novak’s face.“By disappointed I mean—”

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Novak mutters, dropping his gaze to the bowl of gruel in front of him.Rafa hadn’t been angry at Novak for failing to pay court at his retirement extravaganza.He’d merely missed Novak’s presence—regretted the very unfortunate and legitimate circumstances that had kept him from coming to Manacor.

Regretted the fact he’d been in a hospital in France, a scarecrow of skin and bones, getting his food piped via needle into his veins and vomiting everything back up anyway.

The sound of Novak chortling wrests Roger away from grim thoughts of soiled hospital linens, alien florescent lights, and latex gloves grasping syringes.

“It’s funny, isn’t it, how these things often work out in the end?”

“What things?”

Novak leans back in his chair, eyeing Roger’s frown with amused disdain.How can you not know what I’m talking about? 

It’s what everyone’s thinking of whenever they talk about us.What we obsess over, too, even though we say we don’t.

The Slam count, you dummy. 

“He—Rafa—” Novak continues aloud—“always seemed to care more about … about …”

“About what?” Roger asks sharply.

Still slumped in his chair, Novak lazily extends an arm and drags a finger across the tabletop, to and fro, to and fro.

“About proving he could just hang with you, rather than be better than you.Fly alongside”—now his left index finger joins his right, moves in unison towards the coffee thermos—“like in those airshows where stunt pilots do these tight formations.”

A spike of something—vexation; dread—flares in Roger. 

“What about with you?”

Novak laughs. 

“Me, he just wanted to beat.And I him.Not that we were enemies, though.We weren’t enemies any more than we were best friends or each others’ secret crushes.Just two colleagues in the same unforgiving profession.Two people who happened to run into each other a lot.”

And strangely, it’s true.Roger remembers an article he’d once seen on one of those Isn’t This Cool websites aimed at coffeeshop hipsters: “Djokovic and Nadal have the greatest rivalry in tennis.”Remembers it not because it had set his blood aboil, but because it was the only time he’d seen such an opinion expressed and argued for in writing. [[6]](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/djokovic-and-nadal-have-the-greatest-rivalry-in-tennis) Despite being the two true contemporaries out of their triumvirate—matched in style and strategy, married in shared suffering on a handful of extraordinary occasions—their side of the triangle really had been by far the least romanticized.Roger and Novak had put years into making Wimbledon 2019 the explosive, existential encounter it was. 

And Roger and Rafa had been—well, Roger and Rafa. 

_Fedal_.

Whatever the world thinks that—they—had actually been. 

“Obviously,” Roger replies, clearing his throat, “Rafa wanted more than that with me.”

Novak lifts an eyebrow.

“I mean—”

Frightfully nervous all of a sudden, Roger picks his way across the rest of his sentence with extra care, like one stepping across a swamp. 

“More than just to keep up with me.”

Novak peers at him delicately—hazel-eyed gaze shaving away layer upon layer of Roger’s prevarications, Roger’s technically not untrue falsehoods, like a mandoline flaying an onion.

“Maybe,” he says eventually.“But …”

He turns to the window next to their table, out of which they can both see the green valley exhaling mist, coming slowly to life with foot and animal traffic.

“Such things do not rest with men.A god grants them—exalting now one man; throwing another beneath the hands.”

“Come again?” Roger stammers.

For a moment Novak’s voice had gone strangely resonant, as if someone else—a ghost—had been talking through him.But a flick of his head, a shudder of his thin shoulders, and just like that, Novak’s exorcized himself of his momentary possessor—is a halfway normal, moody and prickly, human being again.

“It wasn’t enough for Rafa just to _want_ it—‘it’ being, of course, the historic record in Slams,” he says.“The world seems to think winning one or two or twenty-two is up entirely to the individual, a measure of his ability and strength and hunger for success.But you and I both know it doesn’t work like that at all.It’s the luck of the draw, how each one shakes out every time.Injury taking out those who could have threatened us the most, while we do our best to evade it.And it’s a matter also of who else the tennis gods picked to play the sport ten, fifteen, twenty-odd years ago.How _they_ manage all the variables; how much of a fight they can bring to us.” 

Yes, yes—but what was Novak _saying_?

“What I’m _saying_, is—” Novak smoothes his palms over his stubbly face; rubs his eyes—“sure, Rafa _wanted_ to catch up to you.Maybe even he wanted to overtake you.But that he ended up achieving what he wanted, is not because he was better or stronger or more determined than either of us.” 

He’s glaring at Roger now for some reason, his voice firm and dark as slate.

“The universe _gave_ it to him, Roger.And nothing is _ever_ given by accident, you must understand.”

Roger turns this thesis over in his head.He’d like to buy it, he really would.But—

“Where’s the logic in all of this?I mean—_what’s_ the logic?I’m not saying you’re wrong, Novak; but …”

Why him, and not you or me? 

(Not that Roger felt Rafa hadn’t deserved it.No one could have deserved it more than Rafa, that warrior with a farmer’s work ethic and a soul as spotless as a just-pressed sheet of paper.But Roger knows far too many good people who’d been handed a raw deal by Fate—like Juan Martin Del Potro: an angel of a man, ravaged by injury.

And far too many bad people—like Ilie Nastase and John McEnroe, giants of another era—who’d flourished despite their assholery.)

Novak massages the crown of his woolen beanie, which Roger now knows covers the shriveled, scarred scalp where his luxurious pelt of hair used to be. 

“Not all things in life have a logic to them, Roger.But here I think it’s quite simple actually, what’s going on.The more you want something, or the more you want it for the wrong reasons, the less likely it is it will be given to you.”

And in the pause that ensues, a shadow crosses his face—a shadow that darkens into a grimace, as if what he’s about to say next, what he wants or needs to say next, is causing him pain to say it.

“You have to be modest in your wanting.You have to understand and accept that you can want something—want it desperately—but not have the right to it.If you ask for more than your fair share, or if you don’t realize that what you want isn’t fair to everyone else …”

He trails off, massaging the tabletop.

Roger waits for the rest—because it still doesn’t make sense to him.

But something in Novak’s eyes tells Roger he’s done talking.

That the rest of this is up to him to figure out.

He doesn’t figure it out—not, that is, till near the end of the day, which turns out, exactly as Bibek’s warned, to be a “big” day, meaning a long and hard one.

But as long and hard days go, this one starts off gently enough.Out of Phakding it’s just more of this easy trail, now sloping downward at the barest of gradients, for they’re nearly at the river’s level now, and will just be following it for the remainder of the morning.Half an hour after setting out, they arrive at the entrance to Sagarmatha National Park, where they pause briefly to let their guides handle the team’s trekking permits at the ranger office.There, too, the cameras are brought back to life—just in time to catch Roger joining Novak in rolling the bank of prayer wheels just inside the park gates.

“_Now_ you believe in cosmic harmony, huh, Roger?”

Roger does, actually: for Novak’s mysteriously brightened up after just this warm-up section of trail; is now even grinning over his shoulder at Roger while raking his right hand over the long wall of red cylinders.

“It’s because we’re walking on sacred land now,” Novak whispers reverently.“Can you feel the positive energy?” 

Or it’s just what being in the mountains does to you, thinks Roger, not knowing whether to roll his eyes or laugh out loud.In a world that expects to find its sports stars—all its stars—cavorting on the beach during their vacations, Roger’s always been a man of the hills; has always preferred to abscond to his beloved Alps after a draining victory or a flattening loss.For as much as he loves tennis, it can’t always deliver the sense of accomplishment the way following a trail over hill and through dale, kilometer after kilometer after kilometer, can.At the end of a day like this one, no one can negate the fact he’s gotten himself from A to B, all on his own steam.

A match of tennis played and lost, on the other hand, feels like—_is_—a negation: of his talent, his effort, his time, his everything.

Of course, these mountains—the Himalayas—are not quite the back country sanctuary Roger’s used to.In the Swiss Alps, there are no sightseeing and rescue helicopters constantly ruining the quiet, no yak and mule convoys dredging up dust storms and shunting them off to the side of the trail every ten, fifteen minutes.Nor are there scenes of startling poverty, like the one he’d come across just shy of an hour inside the park—two women, swaddled in woolen saris so thoroughly patched they’d looked like quilts, bathing a grinning infant in a bowl of steaming water outside a decrepit shack.

But there’s also a beauty to this place that’s all of its own, he admits.Skies crisper and deeper than Mediterranean waters.The trail glowing like a river of gold under the sun.Verdant fields of vegetables hedged by stone walls and tall pines.And—at long last—snow-clad peaks, rising so high above and beyond the valley they look as though they’ve been painted on the sky.

“Thamserku,” Bibek announces, as Roger gapes at the tallest of the distant behemoths, a fin of ice and rock piercing the sky like a razor. 

He doesn’t want to say it out loud quite yet, but he’s actually liking this journey so far—the company he’s being forced to keep notwithstanding.

All he’d really change about this trek, if he could change anything, is—are—the bridges.The handful they’ve crossed thus far this morning aren’t proper ones with suspension cables or struts, but mere swing bridges garlanded with prayer flags, wide enough only for one-way traffic, slung high across the Dudh Khosi’s many forking tributaries.With every step they bounce like trampolines, and so far Roger’s only gotten himself across each one of them by breathing steadily and keeping his eyes obstinately screwed on the heels of the person right in front of him. 

They’re on their fourth bridge by the time he realizes he’s making the bouncing worse by walking in time with the person in front of him.And unfortunately, on this crossing, it’s Novak who’s in front of him—and who, somehow, is inspired to look over his shoulder while they’re both still making their way over rushing water, some distance from safety.

“You OK, Roger?”

Roger grunts.

“Ah.”Novak’s face twists into a triumphant leer.“Afraid of heights, I see.”

“I don’t like being suspended in midair,” Roger says drily.“Not quite the same thing.”

They may never contest a title again, but as long as he’s breathing, he will never let pass a chance to correct Novak Djokovic.

“That doesn’t make sense to me,” Novak warbles, as he scrambles onto terra firma and Roger follows.“How are you not a nervous wreck every time you get on a plane?”

“It’s different on a plane.”

“No, it’s not!”

“It is.”

“Well, wait till you see, Roger,” Bibek suddenly says from behind.

Roger whips around.“See what?”

“If you are scared of _this_—” Bibek indicates the lengthy steel hammock behind them, which has taken them across the raging Dudh Khosi itself—“this is nothing.The mother of all bridges is still to come.”

“The _Hillary_ Bridge,” proclaims Pasang dramatically.

A knot forms in Roger’s stomach.“It’s even _longer_ than this one?”

Bibek’s grinning—and so, he sees when he turns back around, are Pasang and Novak.

At last, after they’ve stopped for lunch at a lodge at the valley’s very bottom, and resumed walking for the afternoon, picking their way along the Dudh Khosi’s boulder-strewn banks, it comes into view, and Roger’s jaw drops. 

It’s not just long, it’s _high_: a gossamer thread strung across the valley’s very top, an office building’s height above their heads.

“No fucking way,” he says.“I’m not doing this.”

Behind him the film crew burst into laughter, sending a geyser of flame roaring through Roger’s diaphragm.

“Come on, Roger!It’s perfectly safe.”

“Are you kidding me?!”

Pasang points and traces a finger along the bridge.

“Look at them!Can it really be dangerous for us if _they_ can cross?”

Roger shakes his head, his stomach cramping, as he follows Pasang’s finger, tracking the caravan of ant-sized yaks crawling their way across the towering void.From where they’re standing, the bridge looks like a celestial smirk, grinning balefully down at him. 

“Bridges hold until … until they don’t.”

Novak saunters up to Roger.

“It’s OK,” he says, flinging an arm across Roger’s shoulders.“I cross with you.If the bridge gives, we both die.”

“I don’t want to die with you!” Roger squawks, snapping his shoulders free of Novak’s embrace.

“Suit yourself, then,” Novak lilts, strolling on ahead.“You cross by yourself and I watch.Too bad we did not bring a lawn chair with us.” 

“Oh, go to hell!”

The trial doesn’t come till after a full forty-five minutes of climbing—forty-five minutes negotiating a slippery, mud-strewn staircase up the slope of the valley, during which Roger’s terror and exasperation (why the goddamn hell did they spend so much time walking downhill only to have to climb back uphill?) are allowed to rise to unbearable heights.When at last they’ve gained the bridge’s level and are standing upon its concrete landing, catching their breath, Roger is all but ready to let loose the speech he’d practiced on repeat on the way up: thanks for having me along; it’s been fun; but—

—and is elbowed painfully by Novak in the side.

“So who goes to his death first?You or me?”

Roger’s sure he’ll say something unprintable if he responds to Novak; so he looks for help instead to the rest of the team—and finds Oliver pointing a camera at him from almost pointblank range.

“Could you please get that out of my face?” he asks. [7]

He’d meant to sound calm and polite; but somehow what comes out is this dyspeptic squeak—a pathetic sound that triggers a rumbling snigger from Novak, and that Oliver replies to with a saucy shake of the head.

He’s granted a brief stay of execution as he stands there stewing in enraged mortification—first by a mule convoy coming from behind; then by a troupe of porters crossing this single-lane Bridge of Death from the opposite side.But at last the coast is all clear, and Pasang invites—challenges—anyone brave enough to take over the burden of leading the way from him temporarily.

“All right, then, I go first,” Novak says, clapping Roger on the shoulder.“Just to show you there is nothing to this.”

Novak wouldn’t dare rub this in his face.If he so much as tried—

“Oh, Roger, I will _absolutely_ rub this in your face.I am not going to let you live this one down for as long as _I_ have left to live.”

And with that, Novak launches forth off the landing like a server rushing to net, taking the bridge in vast strides, screaming one of his earth-shaking roars.

He’s about a third of the way across—or maybe only a quarter; the bridge is so long and droops so deep it’s hard to tell—when he stops, lungs spent, and turns around.

“I’m getting lonely out here, Roger!” he half-shouts, half-gasps through cupped hands.“When are you going to join me?” 

“You get yourself across first,” Roger stammers.

Just watching Novak _stand_ there—suspended in the void, protected from a horrifying drop by a ribbon of metal barely a meter wide—is making his stomach crawl.

“_Cuh_-mon, Rogi!” Novak hollers.“_Chum jetze_!”

But all Roger can do—even in the face of this unimaginable insult of having his favorite taunt turned back upon him—is stand on the landing like a diver on a cliff’s edge and shake his head mutely, as he watches Novak—

Why the hell was Novak coming back _toward_ him?

“Roger,” Novak pants, when he’s close enough again to be heard speaking at conversational volume.“Don’t be scared.It really looks a lot worse than it is.”

Still Roger remains where he is, gripping the straps of his day pack with white knuckles.

“Pathetic, man,” Novak sighs, digging both fists into his hips.“I used to wonder why you lost all those tiebreaks to me at Wimbledon.Now I guess—”

Roger doesn’t hear the rest of Novak’s sentence.A dull roar has filled his ears, he’s seeing red, and the next thing he knows, his boots are making an odd clattering sound, and when he looks down he sees metal plates perforated with holes, through which he can see—

Fuck.Fuck.Fuck.

“That’s it, Roger!” Novak exclaims.“Nice and steady.Come on now.”

The bridge is acting like a giant magnet—glueing Roger’s feet in place; dragging his hands and knees toward its cold metal floor with irresistible force.But that metal floor is bouncing, jerking with every one of Novak’s footfalls, so Roger recoils, reaching blindly for the rope railing to his right, and tries to refocus his vertigo-addled gaze on Novak’s retreating feet.

They’re doing The Walk, he sees when he finally finds them: that easy, limber swagger, peculiar to the Serb, that he’s seen on court so many times, and been driven mad by so many times.The same anticipatory prowl about the baseline, that augured—if done right before Roger’s serve on a critical point—a brazen return winner.The same saunter that had always borne Novak back to his chair after a break of serve or a set, or to the net after match point, after championship point. 

And as if this weren’t torture enough, Novak’s now turned around to face Roger and is strolling _backwards_, holding his arms aloft like an adrenaline junkie on a fairground ride. 

“See Roger?Perfectly safe.I could cross this blindfold.” 

He yanks the hem of his beanie over his eyes.

“Stop it,” Roger wheezes, shuffling along, both hands glued to the railing.

But all Novak does, after obliging, is fish out his phone and hold it aloft.

“Say hello to the world, Roger!I’m filming this for Instagram.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake—”

“Hi, Roger!How’s the view from up here?”

Gritting his teeth, Roger straightens up and summons his best sportscaster voice and smile, all the while vowing, as soon as he’s wormed his way out of this death trap, to think up and carry out the most devastating form of revenge possible upon Novak.

“Hey, everyone!The view’s, um … I can’t tell, actually, cause I’m not looking over the side.I’m pretty sure it’s a great view.”

“He’s not looking because he’s too scared,” Novak hisses into his phone.

“I’m _not_ scared!I just don’t—”

The bridge suddenly twangs beneath his feet, snapping like a bow being unloaded, as Novak springs into the air and crashes back down flat-footed.

“_Fuck_!” Roger bellows, as Novak doubles over roaring with laughter.“You _fucking_—”

Out comes a litany of the worst words he knows in every single language he knows.

“_Oof_!” squeals Novak.“Better hope I don’t post this unedited, Mr Everyone Likes To Call Me A Gentleman!”

Roger couldn’t care less if Novak, asshole that he was, posted the whole fucking thing to Instagram or whichever other social media platform of his choice.He was going to kill Novak as soon as they got to the other side.Before they got to the other side, if he could lay his hands on him—

“Well then, come get me, Rogi._Cuh_-mon!Bonus points if you can pick me up and toss me over the side.”

He’s winking at Roger, the sassy sonofabitch; but Roger can’t unglue his hands from the railing to headbutt Novak—can’t but eke forward a half step at a time, heart racing in throat, legs shaking like jelly.And on like this they go—Novak ambling just out of reach; Roger shuffling after him, fighting not to lose his lunch over the Dudh Khosi canyon as he hauls himself hand over hand along the railing.

They’re nearly at the long metal smile’s other end, crawling up the last few sloping meters beneath the concrete landing, when Novak finally puts away his phone and starts walking forward again, like a normal human being.

“Last few steps, Rog!” he sings, leaping onto the landing and ostentatiously extending a helping hand.

Roger thinks of grabbing it and yanking hard—hard enough to send Novak reeling forward, off the landing, into a tooth-shattering face plant.But Novak’s prepared to receive all eighty-five kilos of Roger’s bodyweight, has got his other hand on one of the bridge’s metal anchors and his feet firmly planted in a wide stance; so Roger swats the hand away and, at bloody last, lunges at him.

There’s shock in Novak’s eyes—shock, and fear, as Roger’s hands make for Novak’s neck. 

And that’s enough to break Roger’s nerve—to cause him to lower his arms, and to stumble aside as Novak staggers backwards, barely avoiding a collision.

He braces himself for an eruption of profanity behind him: a choice selection of Serbian curses, or at the very least, an enraged demand for an explanation.But there’s only silence, and moments later, a hint of a gentle, contrite hand on his day pack, as he scrambles on ahead up the slippery path, Novak’s footfalls shadowing his own.

He takes the ordeal of the next few hours as penance, of a sort, for his egregious loss of composure.Past the Hillary Bridge—the very last, Pasang hastens to tell Roger after the whole party’s crossed, of the day’s death traps—the trail turns unrelentingly steep, driving up, up, up toward a sky now heavy with leaden clouds.Never having been taxed to exhaustion on a hike back in the home country, Roger now finds himself gulping the thin wet air like a goldfish as he struggles up this unending chute of soft dirt, thighs and back burning dully. 

Yet as intense as it is, his agony’s not bad enough to shut his mind down, as it sometimes is after a gut-busting rally—leaving it free to wander, and alight upon, the painful reason why he’d nearly been driven to murder by Novak’s juvenile, intentionally cruel antics over the Dudh Khosi canyon.

“How do you do it, Novak?” are the words that stumble out of his mouth, once they’ve made it to the first patch of flat ground this unforgiving climb has conceded them, by which point desperation and self-loathing have entirely overcome his guilt and embarrassment.

Novak starts.“Do what?”

“Stay so calm, always.”

They’re sitting a racquet length apart on a low stone slab, toweling off and glugging their recovery drinks as though they were court side and not perched on a ledge on this mountain ridge, high above a roiling sea of fog.

“Like when we were flying in,” Roger says, in response to Novak’s blank stare.“You weren’t scared at all.”

Novak barks a rueful laugh.

“Are you kidding, Roger?I was terrified.I was sure we were going to die.”

Liar, thinks Roger, glaring back at Novak.I have _never_ seen or heard you scared, not even when the newspapers were saying you had six months left to live.

Whereas all I do these days, all I’ve done the last fucking decade, is get scared.Of perfectly safe bridges.Of losing a Slam when I’m one point away from winning it.

Of facing other peoples’ feelings and owning up to my own.

“You don’t know me, Roger,” Novak retorts, mind-reading faculties apparently restored.“I’ve been scared many, many times.On and off the court.”

“Oh, _sure_.” 

“What?You think I don’t have feelings?That I’m some sort of robot?”

That’s what most of the world used to think of you, Roger muses, eyeing Novak’s tight-jawed glare.Djokovic the android, the boring baseliner, good only at hitting balls back.Only those who truly knew their tennis appreciated the brilliant, lethal architecture of Novak’s game—how he’d crafted each of his victories like a chess grandmaster, patiently playing the enemy king, shot by shot on every point, into his traps. [[8]](http://www.tacticaltennis.com/defensive-master-class-novak-djokovic/)

But mentally—psychologically—Novak really had to be made of something bionic.Teflon.No; Teflon was the stuff they put on pots so they wouldn’t stick. 

The bulletproof stuff, was what his mind was made of.Kevlar.That was it.

“I guess what I really mean”—Roger swishes the liquid in his Nalgene, contemplates whether he ought to down a brace of painkillers with this last bit—“is that you don’t seem to let fear affect you.When it counts, you’re focused, you don’t make mistakes, you never lose your nerve.”

He pauses; waits for the objection.And when met only with silence—

“How do you do it?”

Novak takes another swig of his drink.Swallows, shrugs, and doesn’t question how this extremely general conversation has abruptly homed in, as all their conversations have a way of doing, upon the subject of their shared battleground, the wellspring of their everlasting enmity.

“I play every point as they come.I forget the last point happened and I don’t think about the next point either.I don’t think about the score, either.I just play the point.”

Liar, Roger thinks again.He remembers all too well Novak’s exasperating patterns: how he could take to conceding points with mysterious alacrity—even at the expense of holding his own serve—only to tighten his game like a vice in the next receiving game, in the tiebreak he’d forced, when match point down.Opening the door to victory just a crack for his opponent—only, at the very last moment, to slam it shut in his face.

“Sure, that’s what every coach on earth tells their player to do, play each point like it’s the only point of the match.But no one’s better than you were at playing the big points.You _must_ do something different.”

Novak smirks.

“You’re right, Roger.Everyone else _tries _to play their matches a point at a time.I just did it.”

“Bullshit.You must have a secret.Some other method.”

“It’s not a secret.You already know what it is, actually.”

“Don’t make fun of me—”

“I’m not making fun of you!”

“You’re telling me I just need to care less about things, right?” Roger snarls.“Or maybe practice more?”

He half expects Novak to smirk again, harder, and agree.But Novak’s expression is perfectly grave, and when he replies, his voice is surprisingly gentle.

“No, Roger.It’s not practicing more or caring less that’s the trick.”

“So then what the hell _is_ your trick?”

Now Novak’s looking at Roger with something even softer—something that is making Roger’s insides squirm.Compassion, maybe.Pity.

He’d honestly rather Novak laughed in his face.

“Maybe I spell it out to you one day, Roger, if you cannot figure it out on your own,” he says quietly.

“I _definitely_ won’t figure it out on my own,” Roger mutters, turning his eyes to his toes. 

Just tell me now, for God’s sake.

But just then Pasang calls time on their break, and Novak, saved by the bell, gets up and claps Roger on the shoulder, wearing a solemn, wistful smile.

Some day, his eyes say.

At least he’s owned to having a trick, Roger tells himself about an hour into this next grueling push.It’s not me who’s got a problem.Fearlessness is not a normal state of mind, some basic requirement I am incapable of meeting.I’ve just not found a way of dealing with it that works as well as whatever he’s got.

Except, a sterner voice abruptly intercedes, he, Roger Federer, absolutely _did_ have a problem.Getting scared was one thing; losing matches from match point up, double fucking match point up, was another.And what was worse, he wasn’t always like this.There was a time when he wasn’t a choker.When, if he absolutely had to lose a huge match, he’d lost it without fragility or fear.

Like at Wimbledon in 2008.He’d fought that one till the bitter end.Played each and every point as it if were the only point that existed in time.Refused, even when facing match point down two sets to love, just to roll over and let the young Mallorcan evict him from his throne.

What on earth had happened to him?

Roger doesn’t want to contemplate this question—doesn’t want to go through all the Wimbledons he’s lost since that legendary encounter in search of an answer.But thinking of all the ones he’s won is even worse, and so he returns to that mythical summer evening in ’08, dwells in its paradoxically comforting ambit. 

Yet it’s not his state of mind during the match—that absolute, pristine focus, that obstinate determination—that he’s able to resurrect now.What leaps to mind instead, invades his psyche with a fresh tattoo’s painful clarity, is how _angry_ he’d been afterwards.Not at himself, but at Nadal; and not because Nadal had won, but because the boy had been so mortified, so exasperatingly _embarrassed_ in the wake of his own success. 

“It’s my favorite tournament.It’s a dream for me, playing in a court like this.But _win_—I never imagined something like this.”

No doubt Rafa had spoken like that—_frowned_ decorously, when Sue Barker had asked him what it had felt like to beat King Roger on his home turf—because he’d been mindful of how devastated Roger had been.And Roger had indeed appreciated the worshipful compliments in Rafa’s victory speech, had taken some measure of comfort from the public tribute.But it had gotten weird afterwards, crossed some sort of line in the locker rooms, where Roger had wanted to let it all out and cry till he was hoarse, but hadn’t—couldn’t—because he knew how thin were the walls, and had a feeling Rafa would be listening on the other side.

A feeling that had been confirmed when Rafa had knocked, no doubt perturbed by the absolute lack of noise coming from Roger’s suite, to offer Roger a pack of Quelitas biscuits, an extra one of which he’d purportedly discovered in his bag (“Very good for feeling better after match, no?”).

The morning after, Roger remembers, he’d wanted to roll out of his bed straight onto his jet, to hell with the social meetings and sponsorship obligations he’d recklessly said yes to earlier in anticipation of a routine victory.A desire Mirka had anticipated as soon as match point had been played, and had honored by arranging for the whole team to vacate their rented house in Wimbledon village by mid-morning.But their retreat had been neither quick nor stealthy enough, Roger had realized, when Mirka had run back inside the house, sweaty-browed and hair akimbo from the exertion of directing the army, and announced to Roger that someone was outside waiting to see him.

“Tell them to fuck off,” he’d replied.

“But it’s _him_,” Mirka hissed.

“Who?”

“_Him_,” she repeated, unable even to countenance uttering the name.

Roger had half-risen from the sofa where he’d been lying prone, hand over eyes, poised to demand a stop to this bullshit—and then frozen.

Already, even back then, there was only one _him_.

He’d walked out to find no one out in front—no one, that was, except the hired helpers loading the vans with the Federer team’s piles of luggage—then had circled around, irritation mounting, to the back, where he’d finally spotted the Spaniard skulking by the garden gate.Face half-hidden under a baseball cap, hands in pockets, Nadal looked like nothing so much, Roger had thought for no apparent reason, as a guilty serenader caught red-handed by his crush’s father.

Except he’d seemed delighted to be caught—removing his cap with a flourish, face brightening like the sun coming out from under a curtain of clouds. 

“Hola, Numero Uno!Sorry I hide back here, I come by the front but—” 

By the time Roger had realized he’d spoken his thoughts through the look on his face—Are you taunting me with your cute honorifics, you little shit—the damage had been done, and Nadal’s smile had slackened into an O of consternation.

“Hey,” Roger muttered, forcing a small smile that he knew would come out a grimace.

Was he leaving already? asked Nadal tentatively, after a lengthy pause filled with English birdsong.

“Yeah,” Roger replied, looking at his toes. 

“Early flight, no?”

Roger shrugged.“I leave when I want to.And I want to leave as early as possible.So yeah.”

“Ah,” the young Spaniard said, nodding with understanding—and a hint of grave admiration.That was right: Rafa, no doubt rigorously schooled in modesty as in all other virtues by his relatives, hadn’t adopted the high-rolling lifestyle so many other players had rushed to embrace upon attaining even moderate success; had primly stuck to flying commercial as well as eating, at the tour’s glitziest destinations, at family-run tavernas instead of Michelin-starred restaurants. 

And when was Rafa leaving? 

“Mañana.The familia they come only a few days ago, they want to see Londres one more day.Try the famous afternoon tea at the place in Picadilly.”With one foot Rafa swept some loose gravel from side to side, peered timidly at Roger.“What are you going to do back in Sweesserland?”

Roger shrugged again; imitated Rafa with his own foot.“Dunno.Rest, I guess.”

“Is good to rest, for sure.You need it.”

And him too, certainly, after this marvelous run of success.

“Sí, sí.Soon as I am back home, I go on a boat.Spend maybe a week or two sailing around Mallorca.”A look of dreamy contentment slid onto his face, briefly dispelling the shadow of unease.“Is wonderful, being on a boat.Especially around Mallorca, the sea is so beautiful there.I think actually of getting my own boat someday.Then maybe you come visit and—”

Afterwards Roger had regretted it mightily; had felt the knot of guilt sitting low in his stomach the entire drive to City Airport and most of the shortish flight back to Basel.But in the moment, he hadn’t been able to choke back what had come out next, any more than he could have caught and restrained a racehorse bursting out of its gate with a lasso.

“Look, man.I appreciate you coming by to see me, but even if I had the time for this—this chit chat, I’m just not in the mood, OK?I lost a big match to you yesterday.I’m not feeling too great right now.”Up flew a spray of gravel as Roger’s right foot viciously punctuated the end of his sentence.“Maybe you have the ability to, I dunno, be happy for and friendly with the person who has just beaten you, Love thy enemy and all that.But not me, not under these circumstances at least.”

An angry pause.

“Why _are_ you so friendly with me, anyway?”

For a long while, Roger remembers, Rafa had just stared back at him—pain written on his stricken face, along with something else.Something harder, harsher.

Defiance.

“Is …” 

For a moment he’d teetered like someone on the verge of taking a momentous, irreversible step—leaping off the roof of a building; demanding a divorce.But in the end, he’d stepped back from the precipice. 

Literally stepped back, doubling the distance between himself and Roger.

“Sorry, Rogelio, is just me.I know you are upset, and I feel for you, is all, because I was here last year and the year before, no?It help me you were so nice to me after those times, those matches.So I no think coming to see you today would make worse for you.” 

He breathed deeply in through his nose—in, out. 

“So, I leave now.Will see you in Canada, sí?” 

Roger can’t remember what he’d said in response to this; can’t remember having said anything.Which must be correct, because the next he’d noticed, the boy—he still looked every bit a boy, the All-England Club’s new champion, despite the halo of invincibility gracing him—had retreated from the garden gate, wiping his long hair out of his face, and was already by the rosebushes bordering the back of the next house.

“And maybe you beat me there,” he’d paused to add, smiling a smile fragile as china over his shoulder, just before disappearing around the corner.

Cheated, is what Roger would have said, if someone had appeared next to him, right after Rafa had vanished behind the roses that bright summer morning, and asked him how he felt.I feel cheated.Not by him—he beat me fair and square yesterday, he earned this one.But I still feel cheated by the universe, somehow, because this one should have been mine.

Was in my grasp—and I let it go.

And yet—and yet, Roger concedes now, as he grinds and slides his way up and up toward what he’s sure is a false summit on this never-ending ascent—no bystander would have sympathized with his woes in that moment.For as Nadal had pointed out while holding the All-England club’s trophy, Roger had already had _five_ Wimbledons when he’d conceded Rafa one.In the end, he’d rung up eight to Rafa’s two. 

And he’d had eight to Novak’s four when, four summers ago, Novak had nicked number nine from under his nose to be his fifth.

It’s quite simple, Novak had said, what’s going on here.

And now, suddenly, Roger agrees with Novak—for he can finally see the logic to all this.

The universe had always granted some measure of success, only to take something else away—exactly that something they’d wanted more than anything else, wanted beyond reason and beyond right.

Slam number twenty-one from Roger, because he’s wished never to be overtaken by Rafa or Novak.

The sport itself from Novak, Roger realizes now, because Novak had wished to leave Roger and Rafa in the dust—had openly proclaimed his outrageous ambition to end the perennial debate in his favor, after already having achieved what no one else did or could: break their stranglehold on the sport; break and humble them both in their prime.

What then, wonders a part of Roger before Roger can stop himself, had Rafa wanted, that couldn’t be said to be within his fair share?

That fate had taken from him—and replaced with, of all possible things, the consolation prize of the pinnacle of tennis history?

By the time his mind’s given voice to this question, Roger’s feet are at last traversing flat ground, crossing the paved threshold into the boisterous amphitheater of buildings that is Namche Bazaar, and he takes this as an excuse not to pursue an answer to it.

******

**[1] **The specific phobias Roger and Novak are revealed to have in this chapter are, as far as I know, fictional.(The root cause of Novak’s, though, is not—and the real Novak _is _afraid of loud noises (fireworks during matches make him _especially_ grumpy).

**[2]** Way back in 2011 _Sports Illustrated_ published a lengthy profile of Novak, “Staring Down History,” which you can read in full [here.](https://www.si.com/vault/2011/05/23/106070651/staring-down-history.) This and another profile published in the _New Yorker_ from 2013 ([“The Third Man”](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/02/the-third-m)) have heavily informed my portrayals of Novak in this fic.Both are excellent pieces, worth reading in full if you want a better understanding of this fascinating, remarkable, complex, and often misunderstood man.Here I’ll just except a passage from the SI profile, describing Novak’s boyhood experience at a German tennis academy, that’s stuck particularly with me (and has served as an inspiration for the conversation Novak and Roger have over lunch on the trail):

> The boy arrived in midwinter with little cash; Pilic's wife [Niki Pilic was a former Croatian pro who coached at the academy] dubbed him Jacket, because he didn't have one. Goran [Djokovic, Novak’s uncle, who accompanied Novak to Germany] stayed five days. When he left Nole cried.
> 
> The stakes were high. Novak developed quickly, but the Djokovic restaurant depended on seasonal business—sometimes good, sometimes not. The academy cost more than $3,000 a month, and even when Pilic threw in a discount, the travel costs there and to tournaments near and far squeezed Srdjan [Novak's father]. ‘He borrowed the money with high interest, from the loan shark, 10, 15 percent a month,’ Goran says. ‘Who knows how much? I don't want to count it.’
> 
> No wonder Novak seemed like the oldest soul at the academy. One afternoon, 20 minutes before he was due to hit with Pilic, Novak passed Pilic's lunch table en route to warming up. Told that it seemed too early, Novak said,‘I’m not going to waste my career.’ Pilic was stunned. ‘He was 13½!’ the coach says. Serbs point to the bombing as the crucible of Djokovic's competitiveness, but he also had no choice. The family had put all its chips on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, judging by the amount of the time it took me to write this, plus the fact that I'm positive Chapter Four will be even longer than this one, the next update may not come around till ... well, I'll try my damndest to get it in by Christmas; failing that, before the New Year. In the meantime, thanks to all of you for reading and commenting and bearing with my slow updates and being so supportive and awesome!
> 
> **EDIT 31 DEC '19:** Hi folks! So this next update has unfortunately been super delayed for a number of reasons--travel, work deadlines, all the stuff that happens around the holidays, plus it being a bit harder to summon the inspiration to write tennis RPF because our favorite boys (and gals) are in hibernation for the 2020 season. My apologies to all those of you waiting: please rest assured Chapter Four _is_ gestating (it's just bloody long) and it will come out eventually, hopefully just in time for the first Slam of the season 😊
> 
> In the meantime, thanks so much again for your continued support and interest in this fic, and for your patience! The Muse gets me to write in the first place, but it's you guys who keep me writing 😊

**Author's Note:**

> This hasn’t been beta-ed, by the way, so all comments, suggestions etc. will be greatly appreciated!


End file.
